Nowhere Is a Place (26 page)

“If you ain’t your mama’s child!” Helen said, and stepped forward to get a closer look.

Lovey’s face was placid as she started down the stairs. She held the women’s eyes with her own until she reached the landing and then shot her siblings a quick, slicing look.

Lovey examined the soiled throw rug they stood on for a moment and shook her head pitifully before looking back at her aunts.

The posture her body fell into was years beyond her age: hip stuck out, arms crossed and floating at her waist, neck straight, head steady—that stance should have been out of her reach, but she had it anyway, gripped tight and perfect.

“Who are you, and why you in my house?”

Beka’s and Helen’s heads pulled back a bit before they looked at each other to make sure all that they were hearing and seeing was real.

“
Your
house?” Helen laughed and pressed her palm against her chest.

“I’m your Aunt Beka, and this here is your Aunt Helen. We your mama’s sisters,” Beka said, and offered Lovey the smile she used on the sweet-faced children that attended her Bible-study class.

“My mama ain’t got no sisters,” Lovey replied matter-of-factly, and then had the nerve to examine her fingernails.

Helen’s eyes rolled and she felt her head get hot.

“Where you get that from?” Beka asked, astonished.

Right then they became air, invisible, because Lovey didn’t say another word to either of them, just raised her right hand and pointed a finger toward the stairs. “Beanie Moe, Dumpling, y’all take the baby and get on upstairs and get yourselves under some water. Now.”

Eleven years old and more woman than Helen and Beka had ever come across in someone that young. They tried to keep the astonishment off of their faces, but it stuck out—stunned and as plain as day.

The children filed past Helen and Beka quietly, moving obediently up the stairs.

They were visible again, because Lovey moved to the front door, swung it open, narrowed her eyes in their direction, and said, “Get out.”

Outside, the rain beat down on the sisters’ forgotten suitcases and whipped the fragile stems of the white and pink that blossomed in the planters lining the stone steps.

Beka was more than ready to get going. She hadn’t wanted to come in the first place. Lillie was her sister, but they had never been friends.

When Lillie had left, the bad talk about her followed—and so did the tension between them. So when Lovey’s lips pressed tight again, Beka started forward but Helen’s hand caught hold of her wrist and jerked her back into place.

“We ain’t going no goddamn place,” Helen spat.

Lovey wavered.

They’d seen it, a quick flutter of lashes, a twitch of the mouth, and the whole top part of her body jerked. For a moment she was eleven again, but just for a moment; if they’d blinked they would have missed it.

“I’ll call the law,” Lovey said, and pushed the door farther back on its hinges, welcoming the rain in and soaking the floral piece of carpet that sat at the door.

“Call ’em,” Helen said, and folded her arms across her chest. Puddles at their feet now and someone complaining upstairs about the tub being too full. Lovey’s attention snagged on that possibility and the yellow stain sitting on the ceiling above her head from the last time the tub ran over, Lillie cussing and the switch that left lines across her thighs, and now these women claiming to be kin when Lillie had made it perfectly clear that “all them people in Sandersville are dead.” Or was it “dead to me”?

Lovey couldn’t remember which one it was.

“I will. I’ll call the law,” she said, and her voice squeaked.

Call the law
, Helen wanted to say again. Shoot, she had things she might be able to tell a Phila-del-phia lawman that she couldn’t tell Sheriff Oakland back home. Even though it had begun and ended so long ago, just living in that house and seeing Vonnie every day made it seem as if it was still going on.

Nobody had ever said it was wrong, but something about it had never felt right and she didn’t think it had anything to do with it happening at night or without words or right alongside her sleeping sister.

And it was understood, without words, that what had gone on at night wasn’t something to be discussed at breakfast the next morning or even taken out of the door to the little white schoolhouse the county had put up for coloreds or even into the AME church with its splintered pews and worn Bibles.

Call them, please
! she wanted to holler, because even getting the news about coming to Phila-del-phia had come in the dark of night, like Lillie and Phila-del-phia was a dirty, nasty, forbidden place that could only be discussed after sundown.

“Got the train tickets today for you and Beka,” Vonnie had whispered to them from the doorway.

Helen hadn’t even known where to place her eyes, so she just looked at the darkness above her head.

“Y’all leave day after ’morrow. I already got the time squared away with Mr. Paul.”

How could his words feel like fingers? How did he do that, say a few words in the dark and shuttle her mind right back to the first time, the times in between, and the very last time too?

No sense in crying about it anymore. No sense in being angry about it anymore. The anger had desiccated into shame, and everybody knew that shame was soundless, so he was safe.

And that night, not just his words like fingers, not just the clink of the timepiece dropping into his pocket and against the loose change, not just his back and the wooden door closing softly behind him, but the sound of Suce saying something to him from her room. Where had her words been years ago when he was offending them? Where had her now wide-open eyes been then?

So Helen moved slowly toward Lovey, her eyes challenging her to do it, but her hand acting on its own and grabbing hold of the door, pulling it from Lovey’s grasp and calling over her shoulder to Beka, “Get the bags.” And then the slamming sound of the door and her mouth taking sides with her hand and saying, “Now, where my sista at?”

None of them children had the answer, and so Beka and Helen waited and tried not to get too used to the gaslights and inside plumbing.

* * *

Five days later Lillie came sauntering through her front door and wasn’t at all surprised to smell peach cobbler bubbling in the stove, but the lilacs, vased and sitting at the center of the dining room table, caught her off guard, and she was fixing her mouth to call out to Lovey when she heard the flip of paper and turned to see the big crossed legs of her sister Helen and the half-drunk glass of sweet tea sitting and sweating on the small wooden table, uncoastered.

Twelve years had streaked by like twelve days, and besides the occasional letter, new Easter hat she sent for Suce every year, Christmas telegram, and the five-dollar bills she sent home when the mood hit her, Lillie didn’t give Sandersville or her family a second thought.

Now here they were invading her home and ruining her furniture.

“You ain’t never had nothing and so don’t know how to treat nothing!” Lillie snatched up the glass. “Look at this shit here,” she continued, shaking a finger at the wet circle already leaving a ghostly ring on the wood. “Country-ass Negroes,” she spat, and stormed off to the kitchen.

Helen calmly closed the magazine she was reading, placed it down on her lap, and watched Lillie’s sashaying hips move through the rooms and disappear into the kitchen.

After a while she returned empty-handed, stopping a foot from Helen’s big legs, and stared.

Lillie had gained some weight, Helen thought to herself as they eyed each other. Glamorous, though—full-fledged and way past the practice part that had started back in Sandersville. False eyelashes, powdered face, blue-shadowed eyes. Red lipstick on her lips and red polish on her nails. Helen wondered if her toes were done too.

“Well howdy-do to you too!” Helen finally said, and offered Lillie a genuine smile.

Lillie just huffed and smirked at her. “I know you ain’t come here alone,” she said as she sauntered over to the chair across from Helen and sat down. “I can smell lavender all through the house.” She threw her head back and crossed her legs. “That Beka probably done used up half of my bubbling salts.”

Helen smiled, but said nothing. They had both used quite a bit of the bubbling salts, luxuriating in the bathtub morning and night since they’d arrived.

“I suppose you all have had a good time rifling through my shit,” Lillie breathed, her eyes on the ceiling, one leg bouncing to some tune that went through her head.

They had.

Been all through her bureau drawers and the hatboxes that lined the shelves of her closets.

“Been sleeping in my bed too?” Lillie frowned.

Every night, and it had been like sleeping on a cloud.

“Where else you ’spect us to sleep?” Helen laughed.

“So what y’all want?” Lillie was looking at her now. The tune was gone and her leg was still.

Helen rubbed at the back of her neck and fingered the knot of the scarf she had tied around her kinky hair. “Ain’t you got a hot comb ’round here?”

Lillie huffed with exasperation. “What I want with a hot comb?” she said and pointed to her silky mane. “Do it look like I need one?”

“You may not need one, but them two younger girls of yours certainly do.”

Lillie smiled. “They got they daddy’s hair,” she said, and her leg began to bounce again.

They said nothing for a while and then Lillie softened, her whole body going to butter, melting into the chair, and her lips spreading into a sweet smile that was as close to a waving white flag as she was going to get. “Mama sent y’all up here to check on me, right?”

“And the children,” Helen said, and folded her leg across her knee.

“Where they at?”

“Who?”

“My children.”

“That should have been your first question,” Helen said, and picked up the magazine again. “They gone down to the ice-cream parlor with Beka.”

Lillie’s face twisted. “Lovey too?”

Helen nodded. “She ain’t have no choice,” she said as she closed the magazine, took a long look at the model on the cover, and then finally tossed it onto the small table. “She a woman if there ever was one,” Helen continued, folding her hands behind her head and giving her body a good stretch.

“She grown, that’s for sure,” Lillie responded with nothing but pride in her voice, and then she suddenly stood up. “Hot, ain’t it?” Lillie pressed her palm against her forehead and then under her chin.

Helen smirked; they had the same ways about them, Lillie and Lovey—could dismiss and move on in a tick’s heartbeat. But Helen pulled Lillie back in. “She what, ten now?”

Lillie pulled at the waist of her dress and then at the rounded collar. “Shoot, must be ninety degrees,” she said as she hiked her dress up around her waist.

Laced garters. Helen tried to swallow her jealousy, but it was out and stomping all across her face. Lillie moved to the wall and rested her hand against it for balance as she slid first one garter off and then the other. The stockings followed; those she rolled into a ball and tossed onto the chair. She started off toward the kitchen. “That pie ’bout done?”

Helen rose and followed. “Should be.”

“You say she how old?” Helen pushed when they met up again at the stove.

“I didn’t say,” Lillie spoke into the refrigerator as she pulled a pitcher of lemonade from its depths.

Helen pulled at the oven door handle and peeked inside.

“Can’t you count?” Lillie said, and placed the pitcher of lemonade down onto the table.

“Sure I can, just ain’t sure.” Helen wrapped the dishcloth around the pie pan and gently lifted it from the rack.

Both sisters peered down at the pie and a look of satisfaction spread across their faces before Lillie moved to the upper cabinets and retrieved two glasses.

“Eleven.”

“Going on forty,” Helen laughed.

“Enough about Lovey,” Lillie said as she filled one glass with lemonade and then the next. “What y’all want?”

“Ain’t you gonna ask about Mama?” Helen eased herself down into the kitchen chair.

“How’s Mama?”

“Fine.”

“Good, now what y’all want?”

* * *

What they really wanted was to stay. Stay in that famed place that Lillie had made wicked in Suce’s mind and outrageous and attractive in the heads of those women who called Sandersville home and still bathed in tin tubs out in the yard when the weather allowed.

They wanted to stay and call Phila-del-phia home and one day be able to say the name of that city without the sag and drag of their Georgia tongues.

As far as they were concerned, twelve years earlier Lillie had walked right out of hell and into heaven and all that she complained about—the blast of car horns and too-loud music during the weekdays, the husband and wife who lived next door and fought all weekend long, the white man across the street who spit at the colored children because he had woke up one day and found his neighborhood swarming with brown faces and stinking of salt meat—all of that was just angels and harp music to Beka and Helen.

What they wanted was not to have to hear the cocks crow at dawn or the cows moo or to step over the hound dogs that sprawled themselves out across the very paths they had to take to everywhere.

They didn’t want to snap peas for dinner when they didn’t even want peas for dinner or wash clothes that weren’t theirs. They didn’t want to light kerosene lamps for light or go to church every Sunday, ’cause shit, even the Lord rested on that day, so who was watching and listening while they sweat like pigs in the summer and froze like the ground in the winter all the while singing His praises?

They wanted to stay and forget about the first time, the first time the quilt was lifted from their bodies allowing the night chill to climb over them and the sound of their own sleepy voices, dreamlike and hushed in the room, asking, “What’s the matter, Vonnie?”

They wanted to bury the flint and flame and his face lit and long in the darkness looking like nothing they had ever seen before, the hands pushing their nightgowns up to their chins and his eyes, wells of nothing and way past black, and them not saying a word, but bodies shivering, minds alert and spinning and trying to understand.