Gumbo: A Celebration of African American Writing Part 57

"Well, that ain't good enough."

Ciel had let the suitcase go before he jerked it away. She looked at Eugene, and the poison of reality began to spread through her body like gangrene. It drew his scent out of her nostrils and sc.r.a.ped the veil from her eyes, and he stood before her just as he really was-a tall, skinny black man with arrogance and selfishness twisting his mouth into a strange shape. And, she thought, I don't feel anything now. But soon, very soon, I will start to hate you. I promise-I will hate you. And I'll never forgive myself for not having done it sooner-soon enough to have saved my baby. Oh, dear G.o.d, my baby.

Eugene thought the tears that began to crowd into her eyes were for him. But she was allowing herself this one last luxury of brief mourning for the loss of something denied to her. It troubled her that she wasn't sure exactly what that something was, or which one of them was to blame for taking it away. Ciel began to feel the overpowering need to be near someone who loved her. I'll get Serena and we'll go visit Mattie now, she thought in a daze.

Then they heard the scream from the kitchen.

The church was small and dark. The air hung about them like a stale blanket. Ciel looked straight ahead, oblivious to the seats filling up behind her. She didn't feel the damp pressure of Mattie's heavy arm or the doubt that invaded the air over Eugene's absence. The plaintive Merciful Jesuses, lightly sprinkled with sobs, were lost on her ears. Her dry eyes were locked on the tiny pearl-gray casket, flanked with oversized arrangements of red-carnationed bleeding hearts and white-lilied eternal circles. The sagging chords that came loping out of the huge organ and mixed with the droning voice of the black-robed old man behind the coffin were also unable to penetrate her.

Ciel's whole universe existed in the seven feet of s.p.a.ce between herself and her child's narrow coffin. There was not even room for this comforting G.o.d whose melodious virtues floated around her sphere, attempting to get in. Obviously, He had deserted or d.a.m.ned her, it didn't matter which. All Ciel knew was that her prayers had gone unheeded-that afternoon she had lifted her daughter's body off the kitchen floor, those blank days in the hospital, and now. So she was left to do what G.o.d had chosen not to.

People had mistaken it for shock when she refused to cry. They thought it some special sort of grief when she stopped eating and even drinking water unless forced to; her hair went uncombed and her body unbathed. But Ciel was not grieving for Serena. She was simply tired of hurting. And she was forced to slowly give up the life that G.o.d had refused to take from her.

After the funeral the well-meaning came to console and offer their dog-eared faith in the form of coconut cakes, potato pies, fried chicken, and tears. Ciel sat in the bed with her back resting against the headboard; her long thin fingers still as midnight frost on a frozen pond, lay on the covers. She acknowledged their kindnesses with nods of her head and slight lip movements, but no sound. It was as if her voice was too tired to make the journey from the diaphragm through the larynx to the mouth.

Her visitors' impotent words flew against the steel edge of her pain, bled slowly, and returned to die in the senders' throats. No one came too near. They stood around the door and the dressing table, or sat on the edges of the two worn chairs that needed upholstering, but they unconsciously pushed themselves back against the wall as if her hurt was contagious.

A neighbor woman entered in studied certainty and stood in the middle of the room. "Child, I know how you feel, but don't do this to yourself. I lost one, too. The Lord will . . ." And she choked, because the words were jammed down into her throat by the naked force of Ciel's eyes. Ciel had opened them fully now to look at the woman, but raw fires had eaten them worse than lifeless-worse than death. The woman saw in that mute appeal for silence the ragings of a personal h.e.l.l flowing through Ciel's eyes. And just as she went to reach for the girl's hand, she stopped as if a muscle spasm had overtaken her body and, cowardly, shrank back. Reminiscences of old, dried-over pains were no consolation in the face of this. They had the effect of cold beads of water on a hot iron-they danced and fizzled up while the room stank from their steam.

Mattie stood in the doorway, and an involuntary shudder went through her when she saw Ciel's eyes. Dear G.o.d, she thought, she's dying, and right in front of our faces.

"Merciful Father, no!" she bellowed. There was no prayer, no bended knee or sackcloth supplication in those words, but a blasphemous fireball that shot forth and went smas.h.i.+ng against the gates of heaven, raging and kicking, demanding to be heard.

"No! No! No!" Like a black Brahman cow, desperate to protect her young, she surged into the room, pus.h.i.+ng the neighbor woman and the others out of her way. She approached the bed with her lips clamped shut in such force that the muscles in her jaw and the back of her neck began to ache.

She sat on the edge of the bed and enfolded the tissue-thin body in her huge ebony arms. And she rocked. Ciel's body was so hot it burned Mattie when she first touched her, but she held on and rocked. Back and forth, back and forth-she had Ciel so tightly she could feel her young b.r.e.a.s.t.s flatten against the b.u.t.tons of her dress. The black mammoth gripped so firmly that the slightest increase of pressure would have cracked the girl's spine. But she rocked.

And somewhere from the bowels of her being came a moan from Ciel, so high at first it couldn't be heard by anyone there, but the yard dogs began an unholy howling. And Mattie rocked. And then, agonizingly slow, it broke its way through the parched lips in a spaghetti-thin column of air that could be faintly heard in the frozen room.

Ciel moaned. Mattie rocked. Propelled by the sound, Mattie rocked her out of that bed, out of that room, into a blue vastness just underneath the sun and above time. She rocked her over Aegean seas so clean they shone like crystal, so clear the fresh blood of sacrificed babies torn from their mother's arms and given to Neptune could be seen like pink froth on the water. She rocked her on and on, past Dachau, where soul-gutted Jewish mothers swept their children's entrails off laboratory floors. They flew past the spilled brains of Senegalese infants whose mothers had dashed them on the wooden sides of slave s.h.i.+ps. And she rocked on.

She rocked her into her childhood and let her see murdered dreams. And she rocked her back, back the womb, to the nadir of her hurt, and they found it-a slight silver splinter, embedded just below the surface of the skin. And Mattie rocked and pulled-and the splinter gave way, but its roots were deep, gigantic, ragged, and they tore up flesh with bits of fat and muscle tissue clinging to them. They left a huge hole, which was already starting to pus over, but Mattie was satisfied. It would heal.

The bile that had formed a tight knot in Ciel's stomach began to rise and gagged her just as it pa.s.sed her throat. Mattie put her hand over the girl's mouth and rushed her out the now-empty room to the toilet. Ciel retched yellowish-green phlegm, and she brought up white lumps of slime that hit the seat of the toilet and rolled off, splattering onto the tiles. After a while she heaved only air, but the body did not seem to want to stop. It was exorcising the evilness of pain.

Mattie cupped her hands under the faucet and motioned for Ciel to drink and clean her mouth. When the water left Ciel's mouth, it tasted as if she had been rinsing with a mild acid. Mattie drew a tub of hot water and undressed Ciel. She let the nightgown fall off the narrow shoulders, over the pitifully thin b.r.e.a.s.t.s and jutting hipbones. She slowly helped her into the water, and it was like a dried brown autumn leaf hitting the surface of a puddle.

And slowly she bathed her. She took the soap, and, using only her hands, she washed Ciel's hair and the back of her neck. She raised her arms and cleaned the armpits, soaping well the downy brown hair there. She let the soap slip between the girls b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and she washed each one separately, cupping it in her hands. She took each leg and even cleaned under the toenails. Making Ciel rise and kneel in the tub, she cleaned the crack in her behind, soaped her pubic hair, and gently washed the creases in her v.a.g.i.n.a-slowly, reverently, as if handling a newborn.

She took her from the tub and toweled her in the same manner she had been bathed-as if too much friction would break the skin tissue. All of this had been done without either woman saying a word. Ciel stood there, naked, and felt the cool air play against the clean surface of her skin. She had the sensation of fresh mint coursing through her pores. She closed her eyes and the fire was gone. Her tears no longer fried within her, killing her internal organs with their steam. So Ciel began to cry-there, naked, in the center of the bathroom floor.

Mattie emptied the tub and rinsed it. She led the still-naked Ciel to a chair in the bedroom. The tears were flowing so freely now Ciel couldn't see, and she allowed herself to be led as if blind. She sat on the chair and cried-head erect. Since she made no effort to wipe them away, the tears dripped down her chin and landed on her chest and rolled down to her stomach and onto her dark public hair. Ignoring Ciel, Mattie took away the crumpled linen and made the bed, stretching the sheets tight and fresh. She beat the pillows into a virgin plumpness and dressed them in white cases.

And Ciel sat. And cried. The unmolested tears had rolled down her parted thighs and were beginning to wet the chair. But they were cold and good. She put out her tongue and began to drink in their saltiness, feeding on them. The first tears were gone. Her thin shoulders began to quiver, and spasms circled her body as new tears came-this time, hot and stinging. And she sobbed, the first sound she'd made since the moaning.

Mattie took the edges of the dirty sheet she'd pulled off the bed and wiped the mucus that had been running out of Ciel's nose. She then led her freshly wet, glistening body, baptized now, to the bed. She covered her with one sheet and laid a towel across the pillow-it would help for a while.

And Ciel lay down and cried. But Mattie knew the tears would end. And she would sleep. And morning would come.

Fortune.

BY R. ERICA DOYLE.

Two doors down lives Fortune. She breathes in daybreak in black sarongs and flamboyant halter tops, orchids on her tongue. You watch her heave the gate open in the morning, trip-dance down the wooden steps to Morne Coco Road. The banana tree hides her for a moment, and your heart stops with her disappearance, starts again when her sandals clack on the street. The roosters crow before and behind her, hailing, "Fortune, ho ho, Fortune, ho ho." Her dougla hair, that curly ma.s.s of Africa and India making love, caresses her shoulders, bounces down her back, winds itself over the straps of her red handbag. She has bangles like a garden of silver on her full golden arms.

You stand in the doorway with your tea, now cold, sip it with a grimace. Fortune comes even with your hungry stance, two points converging, two pairs of cocoa eyes meeting, and then she is past you, throwing you a hard-won "Good morning Yvette!" over her shoulder. Her round b.u.t.tocks describe circles under the cotton. "Fortune is a woman could walk and win' at the same time," Couteledge from down the road always said, "That what make them old hags tongue wag, can't stand no woman that age hard back and fete one time, no children no man to slow she down." The chickens in your front yard raise their heads from the dust they've been scouring for corn and insects to watch her. She is the sun rising over the hill, then setting below it, lost from your sight.

Something is pulling at the bottom of your short pants leg. You don't turn, know it is your little nephew, Selwyn, eighteen months old, awake and wanting breakfast. You wait. Two months now your sister, Dulce, send him from New York for you to raise. The child come walking, but ain't saying a word at first, only pointing and grabbing at things he want. To teach him you didn't answer those pulls, matched his silence with your own expectant stare, eyebrows raised into question marks, and smiling to show you not vexed, only waiting. Patience is one thing you always have. That and respect for few words. Finally he began to talk, say "Mek" for "Milk" and "Bah bah" for bottle or cup or ball or bath, and "t.i.ti," his name for you, when he don't know the word at all. You pick things up for him then, showcase fruit, food, and toys like the game show white lady on Miss Flora television until he know what he wants.

"t.i.ti?" says Selwyn, still pulling, but not too bad.

You turn, crouch down to meet his luminous gray eyes, smile. You open your arms and he falls in, laughing. "Good morning, Sello darling." His sweet still-baby smell of powder and coconut oil mix together, his fresh breath on your cheek.

"G'mah nah t.i.ti," he replies.

"Good boy! You hungry?"

"Yesh, t.i.ti!" He laughs at his own words, proud.

You stand and he runs into the house in front of you. You are always surprised at how quickly he covers distances with that chubby duckwalk he have. Not that there is far to go in the small house, it only have two rooms, but he speeds through like a windup toy, and into everything like a little monkey. When the stewardess handed him to you in Piarco airport, you called the woozy and fearful child "Paw Paw Boy" to make him smile, for he was dense and yellow as a papaya, with a shock of reddish hair to match the fruit's insides.

Selwyn climbs onto the seat you've stacked with newspapers to make him a high chair of sorts and fold his hands neatly on the table, ghost eyes s.h.i.+ning.

"I have some roast bake for you this morning," you sing, holding up the iron skillet for him to see the bread round and solid within. "And some nice buljahl I make fresh fresh."

Selwyn giggles. His impossibly small teeth are like pearls between his pink lips. "Fwes.h.!.+"

"Yes, my dear." You place the bowl of codfish on the table next to the bake. "Uh-oh Sello-" you spread your hands wide in puzzlement. "One thing, one thing missing. What is it?" You place a finger on your forehead as if thinking, and his brow furrows to match. "Hmmm . . ."

"Jooch!" cries Selwyn.

"That's right my love, juice!" You take the plastic pitcher full of yellow juice from the narrow counter and put it on the table. "Now, what kind is it?"

"Mmm," says Sello, tapping his head with the palm of one tiny hand, "onch?"

"Good guess, but it's not orange. Try again."

"Magoh?"

"Mango is darker, love. Try again."

Selwyn thinks hard, then smiles and holds up one hand, fingers spread.

"Right, my dear! Five-finger fruit. But you can say 'star' if that's too too difficult. Can you say 'star'?"

"Shah."

"Very good. Now it's time to eat."

Selwyn claps his hands and sings one of his under-the-breath songs to himself, and you make him a small plate of bake and buljahl and pour some juice into his sippy cup, with its spout and two handles. You make some for yourself, and you both eat the salty fish and warm bread in silence.

After breakfast, you clear the table and Selwyn clambers down from his chair. He toddles through the curtain separating the second room from the parlor and kitchen, and goes to pull the sheets around on the bed you both share to "make it up." You rinse the plates in the sink, and put some water on to boil for his bath. This has become your routine, Fortune in the morning, breakfast with Sello, his bath, his toys and books, his nap, then wait for customers. He makes up the bed as the water boils and could probably do it for hours, until you call him. After his bath, you read to him from one of the books Dulce sent from America, and then sweep the kitchen while he plays in the bedroom with the puzzles and blocks Vilma just bring, also from Dulce. Books could be sent alone, but toys aren't likely to make it through customs "at all at all," Vilma had said, shaking her head in a long suck-teeth. "Is only thief they thiefing in that customs you hear? Thief the only custom them d.a.m.n fools accustom."

After Sello clean and sweet and diapers change, playing quiet in the bedroom, you sweep the kitchen and parlor floor until the wood planks sing under the old straw broom. Out go the clouds of dust through the back door, which reminds you to feed the parrot, small and green in the big aluminum cage your cousin Panchita bring it in. "I know you care for it," she say to your sagging shoulders. "I found it on our mountain, I think the wing sore, and you know Mummy don't allow me to have no animal in the house." Panchita's mother was a woman from town who kept their Diego Martin home spotless and free of nonhuman life with a variety of pesticides she got from her shopping trips to Miami. Even the chameleons didn't escape her, though one had conveniently, and appropriately you thought, died in one of her fancy leather shoes. Even today you couldn't see the parrot without remembering the sight of Auntie Maxine bouncing around on one foot while holding the other, toe enmeshed with crushed lizard, and squealing. And so, like Rex, the black puppy, and Pepper, the old cat, the little fellow joined your crew of creatures needing someone to watch them.

You give the parrot some five-finger fruit and mango and some sunflower seeds. He whirls one black eye in your direction, still suspicious of your large brown figure. You run a hand through the short salt and pepper curls on your head and gesture toward the voluminous red-flowered s.h.i.+rt you are wearing, another gift from Dulce. Why she think you would wear a such a thing unless she give it, you don't know, but a gift is a gift. "See?" you tell the parrot. "I wearing my Sunday best only for you." The parrot is unimpressed, but hops down to peck at the seeds, twirling them on his black tongue to crack them just so. You sigh and go back into the house where Selwyn is waiting in the parlor.

"Chick? Chick?" he asks.

"Yes my dear, time to feed the chickens."

He runs ahead, out the front door, down the slanted wooden steps to the chicken coops on the side of the house, under the banana trees. His bare feet send up clouds of dusts in his wake. When they see him coming the chickens begin a soft clucking that sounds like the purr of a rainstorm. Selwyn gets the feed from the side of the coop and grabs it in his small fists, flailing his arms, opening his hands at just the right moment. The hens swirl around him kicking up dust and tickling him with their feathers until the rooster comes from behind the house and sends them cackling and scurrying. As he starts to eat, they converge again, and you watch the cloud of copper and black feathers, the flash of red combs and black eyes, the golden red-haired child throwing food in their midst, laughing in the mid-morning sun.

When the chickens are fed, Selwyn goes down for his nap. He climbs onto the bed flops down and watches as you push two pillows and some sofa cus.h.i.+ons around him to make a small fortress. The first time he slept alone in the bed he'd fallen out three times before you realized that he just would not stay. You were amazed by that, that staying on the bed while sleeping was learned. To know where your surface edges were while unconscious, know boundaries in your dreams. So now you make this wall for him, so he'll be safe while you work. Sello snuggles down and watches until you back out through the curtain a finger on your lips to shush. When you check back before going out to the yard, his eyes are closed, thumb in his mouth with the index finger scratching the bridge of his nose gently.

Today's customers are regulars: Mam Flora, Couteledge, Auntie Meiling and s.h.i.+reen. They all buy one, two, or three chickens for the week, and take them live in a basket, except for Miss Merle, Auntie Maxine's neighbor from Diego Martin, who comes down to Pet.i.t Valley in a s.h.i.+ny car she always call her "automobile." You send Cedrick, Miss Agnes' son from next door to fetch your cousin Ramon to wring the necks for her, as she too fancy to do it herself. While you wait for Ramon, Miss Merle stay in she car, playing cla.s.sical music on the radio, to stimulate the brain she say. You stand quietly in the road near her, to be polite, though you don't like the way her beady eyes rove all over your cut-short pants and that flowered s.h.i.+rt Dulce send, with a look like you covered in cow s.h.i.+t or some such. She smile at you in a way those ladies do, when they about to slit your throat with they mako words, always in somebody business. Miss Merle and them can't stay silent in the presence of another human being, cla.s.s notwithstanding, for very long.

"So, Boysie, tell me Flora girl Fortune home from America come back to Pet.i.t Valley to live?"

"Yes Mam, she living just there down the road."

"Oh ho, close close! All you must have a lot to talk about, America and thing."

You don't say anything. Fortune and you have not exchanged more than ten words since her return, but words and Fortune is something that don't mix. Fortune say, "Words ruin," and then take your hands in hers and that was that.

Miss Merle, seeing no reply forthcoming, continue. "Well, maybe not. I know your sister Dulce there in America making a very nice life for she self. Studying dentistry and everything. Is a a pity your poor mother bless her soul ain't live to see it. But all you doing real good. You have this little business take over from your father and Dulce in America going to be a doctor!" Well, dental a.s.sistant, but you don't bother to correct Miss Merle.

"But that Fortune." Miss Merle look both ways up and down the street and in she rearview mirror to make sure the coast is clear, before leaning out the window to meet your eyes with her own murky black ones. "Boyboy, tell me a true true reason she come back from America so fast. That reason she live in that house all alone, n.o.body come, n.o.body go, no man, no friend n.o.body. You tell me Yvette, why is a woman look like that not have a man and no children to speak of? Taunting and tempting with she little s.h.i.+rts and b.r.e.a.s.t.s bouncing?" Beads of sweat form above Miss Merle's upper lip and spit flecks at the corners of her broken prune mouth. Then she sees Ramon and Cedrick approaching up the street and winds herself back into the car, breathing heavily.

"Tante, are you alright?" you ask, half amused, and a little worried for the state she's gotten herself into.

Staring straight ahead out the winds.h.i.+eld, gripping the steering wheel, Miss Merle murmurs under her breath. "Obeah, I tell you, the girl is obeah woman or one ladiablesse, you mark my words Yvette, be careful with Dulce child!"

You lean into the car window and pat her shoulder, give her brown paper cheek a kiss. "Is alright Auntie, Devil Woman and thing, none of them happen here anymore. Don't worry about me and Sello." You hear the rhythmic squawking and the silence of Ramon catching the hens and killing them. He was always the fastest and the best at it of all his brothers. He brings the bodies in a basket out to the car.

"Thanks, cousin," you say as he puts them in the back seat.

"Eh eh!" exclaims Ramon to Miss Merle. "Auntie, what have you so frighten? Look like you see one jumbie!"

Miss Merle doesn't respond to his teasing except for one long suck-teeth. She puts her car into gear and drives off in a cloud of dust which leads Ramon to speculate on the rain that has been long in coming. You give him twenty dollars and he heads home, whistling.

Now it's past noon and too hot for business or money, but you add up the dollars in your head anyway. Forty-five dollars a chicken, you've made enough for today, anyone else would be extra. And besides, is almost time for Fortune to come home from her job at the market in town.

You close your eyes, feel the beads of sweat on your forehead, breathe the heat and tobacco from your own upper lip. The trees sway in the yard and on the hill across the road-cocoa, flamboyant, mango, jack fruit, and banana-just enough breeze to make a whisper of cool and force the leaves sing. From time to time a neighbor pa.s.ses, or a cousin, on foot or in a wheezy car, and you wave them "Good afternoon."

Then here she comes, slightly slower of step than in the morning, eyes open not as wide, sandals still slap slapping the dusty road. On her head she balances a parcel must be brought from the market and a next one in the hand opposite the hand bag. She fills your horizon with her colors and packages.

You remember coming to her after midnight and leaving before dawn, the timeless embrace between. When she knelt above you, her hair was a net to catch the shadows, she coaxed out the light within you to bursting. The land and hollow of her, the slackness of her belly from the child she left in New York, the salt in the crevice of the backs of her knees, in the crow's feet near her eyes, released. Afterward, you slept lightly enough to hear Sello if he cried out, and, for those few hours, you listened to her breathe. Before roostercall, you slipped out her back door and behind Auntie Pricille's house to your own. Her jasmine smell enveloped you, you still tasted her on your lips.

As she draws even to your gate, she nods you a greeting, a hint of a smile beyond the tiredness at the corners of her eyes. I will see you under the belt of Orion, it says. I will see you when the rooster is still. When the lily closes its eyes for the day, and the old women sleep upright in their easy chairs, hold me like milk in a river of stones. Wash me in stars, I will be your good Fortune.

$100 and Nothing!.

BY J. CALIFORNIA COOPER.

Where we live is not a big town like some and not a little town like some, but somewhere in the middle, like a big little town. Things don't happen here very much like other places, but on the other hand, I guess they do. Just ever once in awhile, you really pay tention to what is going on around you. I seen something here really was something! Let me tell you!

Was a woman, friend of mind born here and her mama birthed her and gave her to the orphan house and left town. Her mama had a sister, but the sister had her own and didn't have time for no more mouths, she said. So the orphan home, a white one, had to keep her. They named her "Mary." Mary. Mary live there, well, "worked" there bout fifteen years, then they let her do outside work too and Mary saved her money and bought an acre of land just outside town for $5.00 and took to plantin it and growing things and when they were ready, she bring them into town and sell em. She made right smart a money too, cause soon as she could, she bought a little house over there at the end of the main street, long time ago, so it was cheap, and put up a little stall for her vegetables and added chickens and eggs and all fresh stuff, you know. Wasn't long fore she had a little store and added more things.

Now the mens took to hanging round her and things like that! She was a regular size woman, she had real short hair and little skinny bow legs, things like that, but she was real, real nice and a kind person . . . to everybody.

Anyway, pretty soon, one of them men with a mouth full of sugar and warm hands got to Mary. I always thought he had a mouth full of "gimme" and a hand full of "reach," but when I tried to tell her, she just said, with her sweet soft smile, "maybe you just don't know him, he alright." Anyway, they got married.

Now he worked at Mr. Charlie's bar as a go-for and a clean-up man. After they got married I thought he would be working with Mary, in the field and in the store, you know. But he said he wasn't no field man and that that store work was woman's work lessen he stand at the cash register. But you know the business wasn't that fast so wasn't n.o.body gonna be standing up in one spot all day doing nothing over that cigar box Mary used for a cash register.

Anyway, Mary must have loved him cause she liked to buy him things, things I knew that man never had; nice suits and s.h.i.+rts and shoes, socks and things like that. I was there once when she was so excited with a suit to give him and he just looked at it and flipped its edges and told her to "hang it up and I'll get to it when I can," said, "I wouldn'ta picked that one, but you can't help it if you got no eye for good things!" Can you magine!? That man hadn't had nothing!! I could see he was changing, done spit that sugar out!!

Well, Mary's business picked up more and more and everybody came to get her fresh foods. It was a clean little store and soon she had a cash register and counters and soda water and canned goods and oh, all kinds of stuff you see in the big stores. She fixed that house up, too, and doing alright!! But, she didn't smile so much anymore . . . always looking thoughtful and a little in pain inside her heart. I took to helping her round the store and I began to see why she had changed. HE had changed! Charles, her husband! He was like h.e.l.l on wheels with a automatic transmission! She couldn't do nothing right! She was dumb! Called her store a hole in the wall! Called her house "junk!" Said wasn't none of that stuff "nothing."

But I notice with the prosperity he quit working for Mr. Charlie and got a car and rode around and walked around and played around! Just doing nothing! And when people go to telling Mary how smart she was and how good she doing and they glad she there, I heard him say at least a hundred times, "I could take $100 and nothing and have more than this in a year!!" Didn't like to see her happy and smiling! I think he was jealous, but he coulda been working right beside her! When he married her it was his business, too! I heard her tell him that and guess what he answered? "I don't need that hole in the wall with stuff sitting there drawing flies, I'll think of something of my own!" Lord, it's so many kinds of fools in the world you just can't keep up with them!!

I went home to lunch with Mary once and he got mad cause we woke him up as we was talking softly and eating. Lord, did he talk about Mary! Talked about her skinny legs and all under her clothes and her kinky hair. She tried to keep it up but she worked and sweat too hard, for him! She just dropped her head deeper down into her plate and I could see she had a hard time swallowing her food.

Then, she try to buy him something nice and he told her to give it to the Salvation Army cause he didn't want it and that he was going to give everything he had to the Salvation Army that she had picked cause it ain't what he liked! Ain't he something! Somebody trying to be good to you and you ain't got sense enough to understand kindness and love.

She cook good food for him, too, and he mess with it and throw it out saying he don't like her cooking, he feel like eating out! Now!

Just let me tell you! She want a baby. He say he don't want no nappy head, skinny, bow-leg baby and laughed at her.

She want to go out somewhere of a evening, he say he ain't going nowhere with the grocery bag woman!

I didn't mean to, but once I heard her ask him why he slept in the other bedroom stead of with her one night-she had three bedrooms-and he said he couldn't help it, sometime he rather sleep with a rock, a big boulder, than her. She came back in with tears in her eyes that day, but she never complain, not to me anyway and I was her best friend.

Anyway, Mary took to eatin to get fat on her legs and bout five or six months, she was fat! Bout 200 pounds but her legs was still small and skinny and bowed. He really went to talking bout her then, even in the store, front of other people. Called her the Hog! Said everybody else's Hog was a Cadillac but his was his wife! And laugh! He all the time laughing at her. They never laugh together, in front of me, anyway.

So, one day Mary say she going to take care some business for a few days and she went off alone. He say "Go head, do what she want to do." He don't care bout what she do! "Do whatever!" Just like that! Whatever! Whatever! Didn't finish it like other people do, like "Whatever you want to," just, "Whatever!" I guess he heard it somewhere and thought it was smart to say it like that. Well, when Mary come back, I coulda fell out cause she brought one of her cousins, who was a real looker; long hair, big busts, and big legs and a heart full of foolishness. Maybelline was her name and she worked in the store all day, I can't lie about that, she sure did help Mary, but where she got the strength, I don't know, cause she worked the men all night! In three or four months she had gone through all the legible men in town, some twice, and then all the married illegible ones, some of them twice too. She was a go-getter, that Maybelline. But, she did help Mary and Mary seemed to need more help cause she was doing poorly in her health. She was sighing, tired and achy all the time now.