Nether Regions (7 page)

“Dark meat. I get it,” he said, his wry expression setting the women laughing helplessly.

Sophie leaned back in her chair and studied them. Stephen, as usual, was eating with single-minded purpose, heaping potato salad onto his plate. Grandam was picking at a golden chicken thigh, but Sophie could tell she was far away. She’d been slipping away lately and Sophie knew it was almost time for her to pass on. Her body was the only thing anchoring her here and even that was getting smaller and lighter. It was probably a matter of months and it saddened her. She’d be mighty lonely without this old woman who knew her inside and out. It would take years before someone else could catch on to all that Sophie was. Most people these days plain weren’t interested; they were moving to a faster beat that she wasn’t sure she wanted to share.

“Can I get you anything, Sophie, honey?” Clary asked, leaning across the table and touching her hand.

“No, no, I’m fine. You go ahead.” Sophie smiled to put the other woman at ease.

Clary. There’d always be Clary. Though Grandam had saved Clary’s mother’s leg more than thirty years ago, Clary had worked for them since and that would never change. She wouldn’t accept money, either, a good thing as sometimes there just wasn’t enough of that to go around, but she got at least two meals there every day and sometimes stayed over in the room attached out back. These days she was more interested in going home to the small waterborne house left by her mother who had died peacefully in her sleep last year.

Clary met Salty Davis while shopping at Biggen’s Grocery in Goshen. Clary went there every month, when Grandam’s check came, or in between if they had a real run on amulets, to buy the staples not provided by the bayou families they helped. Clary had once told Sophie, in an embarrassed whisper, that she and Salty felt drawn to one another as soon as they met.

Salty, a shy, widowed, handsome man of color, worked at Biggen’s as a cashier, and Clary found herself more often than not checking out in his line, even if it was longer than the others. Salty always had an inviting smile coupled with friendly conversation and eventually he’d gotten up the nerve to ask Clary out for a drink. They’d gone to a little bar owned by Sophie’s friend, Angie Bibb. Angie later told Sophie that Salty and Clary were a match made in heaven. Sophie tended to feel the same way. Salty’s two girls, Sissy, now thirteen, and Macy, five, had become family almost overnight and fit as if they’d been there forever.

Sophie sighed. She was truly blessed. She’d never gone hungry. Never had any real hardship. And her life was filled with people who cared for her and, even better, allowed her to care for them.

Leaning forward, she took a spoonful of everything. The potatoes in the salad had come from the Paisley family. She had lanced Timmy’s boils and left with a sack of last year’s shed potatoes. The watercress had come from Dame Ada far over to the east side of the bayou. She had called Sophie out for the recurring ringworm that no amount of treatment seemed to help. Sophie believed it was the piglets she let roam about her cabin. She was messing with them all the time, but no matter how Sophie warned her to leave them alone, she just wouldn’t.

The watermelon had come from Franklin Colby, whose wife Diane had been delivered of a healthy boy last week, and the leaf lettuce and tomatoes had been left at the door, no doubt a gift from one of the many people they’d helped during the years.

Yes, life was good. Sophie realized this but she couldn’t help the longing that filled her heart. It seemed that, although she dealt with people all day every day, she walked alone. There didn’t seem to be anyone who was hers and hers alone.

Chapter Nine

Righteous strolled along Garth Street, his right hand twitching as he remembered the incredibly soft touch of the boy. The boy. Righteous could not even remember his name. He paused on the asphalt as a shiny Ford and a rusted-out pickup slid by. He thrust his hips gently. Righteous felt the boy all over him. Sweet little white boy with eyelashes out to there.

He thought of Stephen, who had eyelashes just as long and his demeanor changed. Guilt gnawed at his stomach, churning the liquor inside. He sighed sadly and moved on. Rounding the corner, he fished keys from his pocket and plopped into his cold Ford. Sitting silently still in the early morning coolness, he allowed Stephen’s sweetness to fill his mind. He saw Stephen’s face but oddly enough it wasn’t wearing the frown of disapproval that he saw so often these days, but rather the gentle, sweet smile from the days when they’d honeymooned in Bali two years ago.

Stephen had to be the handsomest, most loving man Righteous had ever met, and he could not understand why he chased the boys when he had Stephen at home. It made no sense. To keep hurting his lover this way was akin to abuse. Righteous set his lips in a grim line, vowing to behave. And to make sure Stephen never found out for sure. What he did not know wouldn’t hurt him.

He sighed, filled with self-loathing. He pulled his car onto Garth and headed slowly south along Route 46 toward Redstar. Soon Goshen’s lights faded behind him. His mind wove a kind of poetry as he thought of the sexual exploits of the past week. If truth be told, Righteous was bored with the easy access to sex that working at Thirsty’s gave him. Still, he had been doing this a long time and he knew the chickie would go on to someone else, someone who held the power of the moment. Righteous would fade away and there would be someone new for both of them. It was like a game of musical chairs. The only constant in his life was Stephen, and yet he seemed hell-bent on ruining that.

He thought of his parents, his mother killing his father with the hoodoo and drinking herself into a dead liver from the guilt of it all. They’d gone before he was twelve, and what he’d learned about relationships from them could fit in his grandmother’s thimble. His grandma and grandpa had done all right, together forty years before the big storm had washed them away. By then he was on his own and sleeping with the uncle of one of his friends from school. Then he’d met Stephen. Although the attraction had been fast and fierce, their relationship had grown slow, with Righteous stepping back periodically into his old comfortable life with the uncle. He’d never been faithful to Stephen, really faithful, even though they had been together almost three years.

The lights of Redstar appeared out of the country blackness, and Righteous straightened himself in the seat. He quieted his feelings of guilt and inadequacy and pulled up in front of the trailer that he and Stephen rented from Old Man Beard.

Stephen had left the little lamp in the living room switched on for him. He always offered such kind gestures.

Righteous entered quietly and stepped into the bathroom to strip and wash up. Moments later he slid into the warm bed next to Stephen. Stephen turned and pressed a sleepy kiss to Righteous’s forehead then turned back to cuddle into his pillow. Righteous held him close, spoon-fashion, and wanted to cry from the beautiful way they felt together.

Chapter Ten

Morning came too soon. Delora heard Rosalie clattering dishes in the kitchen and quickly pulled herself from the bed and into an old chenille robe.

Rosalie James was still pretty even though her weight was pushing four hundred pounds. Her face was cherubic in its frame of jowl; this face was the one thing that allowed Delora to continue to harbor some feeling of affection for her foster mother. Rosalie had been a harsh mother, not easy to please and making no bones about the fact she’d only taken in Delora and the other children for the monthly stipends provided by the state. Her tone, when she said it, often made Delora wish she had been two children left orphaned instead of only one.

Rosalie’s lips writhed around a piece of cold bagel as she eyed Delora with judging eyes. “Best get him up now. You know I can’t be helping him with my back the way it is.”

“Yes, Mama,” Delora said, gulping the orange juice she’d poured while standing at the refrigerator. The cold acid threatened to crawl back up her esophagus as she moved along the hallway. Dark and dim, with peeling wallpaper that smelled of old smoke, the hallway reminded Delora of pounding fights with her foster sisters, sisters who had grown to lanky womanhood and gone off with greasy men with names like Chuck and Billy Ray. These sisters came back periodically, with black eyes and broken teeth. Mama Rosalie, as she had done with Delora, would take them back into the fold and charge them high rent until they found a new man and a new home. It was her duty, after all.

Pausing outside Louie’s door, the voices came back to her. “At least he didn’t burn your beautiful face” had been the hushed confidence from her friend, Nita May Ginter. “You could have ended up like him.”

Delora had gotten god-weary sick and tired of hearing that. She wished Louie had burned her face. Then at least she would have no excuses. Her life really would be over. Actual scars hidden, she could move among regular people with little trouble. They didn’t know what lay beneath her clothing. They didn’t know she was disfigured, dysfunctional, less than a woman. If it had been her face burned in the fire, they would know right away, would have no doubt. She wouldn’t have to say with body language and voice, no, you can’t come near me. I’m not whole.

The healing had been bad—weeks lying flat on her back, a gel-coated pessary preventing her vagina walls from falling inward and healing together. She would never be able to have children now, they’d told her sadly. The delicate tissues there would never be able to take the stress. Then there had been the infection and the hysterectomy and it was a done deal. It was okay by her; she didn’t need children now anyway. How could half a person give the whole love a child required? She had enough to take care of as it was.

Louie was awake. He had his face turned toward the slanting, early morning sunlight, and the weak glow from behind gave his shiny, scarred face the topography of coal. She paused, hand on the doorknob, to study the almost appealing landscape.

“Well, ain’t you gonna say anything?” he asked after a few long minutes of silence. He turned his ravaged face toward her and was no longer beautiful. “It’s gotta be you, Delora. Ain’t nobody else in the state of Alabama can stand still as a retard like you can.”

Delora moved into the room and touched his arm. Grasping and pulling on her arm, he pivoted his large frame on the bed until his feet touched the floor. He sat there a long time, a hacking cough shaking his shoulders, while Delora moved to the bureau and lit a cigarette for him. Back at his side, she pressed it between his fingers and heaved him to his feet, his wooden walking stick pinching the flesh of her forearm.

They made their way out into the hall and to the bathroom where Louie pissed long and hard. He lifted the cigarette to his lips as he leaned over the toilet and took a deep drag of the tobacco smoke. Delora let her gaze roam across his back, now hidden beneath the white cotton of his T-shirt and had a hard time imagining her hands gripping that back as he pounded his flesh into hers. She had a hard time imagining that she had even sought his company at every break and lunch period at Tyson County High School. Those days seemed a long time ago, especially as each of the two years they’d spent healing from the fire had seemed like it lasted ten.

Lost in reverie, Delora squeaked in surprise when Louie’s hand fumbled hard on her shoulder. She lifted his cane from the rim of the washbasin, and they lumbered along the hall together toward the bright light of the kitchen.

“Mornin’, Louie,” Rosalie said. She stood at the stove frying a large pan of bacon and sausage. Eggs in their little nests on the counter patiently awaited their turn in the pan.

“Smells good, Rose,” Louie said as he felt his way into his chair. He fixed sightless eyes on the window and Delora knew he could feel the heat on his skin.

She fetched plates and silverware and set the table, folding napkins into neat triangles next to each setting. She moved to the toaster as Rosalie broke more eggs into the sizzling frying pan. They moved together in a well-rehearsed routine as Louie sat at the table smoking, lost in thought. Some mornings he would talk about the job he had had before, driving a tractor-trailer for Ebbler Trucking
.
His cross-country time had been the best in eight years they’d told him. He also acquired fewer tickets in three years than any of the other drivers.

Delora knew these stories line by line and was able to tune them out easily. It was the quiet days that troubled her. They were like storms brewing. He always came out of the quiet times angry. Often they could placate him with beer, but this was unpredictable; his anger sometimes stalked them for days.

Delora kept her eyes averted from Louie as they ate and guilt gnawed at her. Why couldn’t she be more compassionate? The sight of Louie eating never failed to spoil her appetite. It wasn’t so much the messy way he ate, more the avid way he ate—face almost in his plate as he loaded his mouth and chewed with bovine persistence. She hated him, that was all. Hated him for stealing her life.

Thief
, she mouthed silently as she chewed her toast.

Soon her simple meal was finished, and she stood thankfully to leave the table.

“And where do you think you’re going?” Louie’s voice arrested her.

Delora paused in the act of rinsing her plate in the sink.

“To work, Louie,” she answered quietly.

“I don’t think so. I’m seeing Franklin at the park this morning and I’ll be needing you for my bath.”

“Louie, I can’t. I have to be at work by eight thirty on greenhouse days. You know that.”

Louie slammed his fork next to his plate, the clanking sound as it glanced off the plate making Delora cringe. “I’ve spoken, Delora. And I don’t want to hear backtalk.”

Delora chewed her bottom lip and clutched her robe more tightly about her neck. Rosalie had paused in eating her breakfast and was watching Delora with jaundiced eyes.

“So what, you want me to lose this job? Who’ll buy the groceries then? Do you want us to be living in the streets?” Delora spoke without thinking.