Standing at the Scratch Line (96 page)

“You got some gall, if you tryin’ to hold somebody to a promise! Seems to me all bets is off and all agreements is canceled. You done thrown our contract in the toilet! It ain’t nothin’ but shit and paper now!”

“I’m not getting a divorce! I told you that before we got married!”

King chuckled bitterly. “You can’t give me what I want! You ain’t got a big enough frame to hold a decent-sized heart! I don’t care about no damn divorce, but one thing is got to be real clear: this here marriage is finished! I loved you once, but that ain’t close to what I feel now! You done pretty well squeezed the joy out of this here house.”

They drove in silence until King pulled up in front of a large, three-story Victorian on Fulton Street. King turned off the engine and got out. He took Serena’s bags up the front steps and then into the house. When he walked back out to the car, Serena was still sitting in it. King got back into the car. “I’m gon’ move out with Jacques whenever he is ready. I figure he still needs you for another year, then we gone! You can go on and live here with yo’ boy!”

Serena took a deep breath and turned to face King. She watched his dark profile and said, “I want you to understand something: I was only trying to protect LaValle. I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

King smiled. She was riding the bull as he had ridden it, getting banged and scraped against the barricades and being dragged unwillingly from point to point. “It don’t matter what you say, yo’ actions shows clear what you’s about. All that stuff you preach about religion and faith is just a pack of lies! You didn’t have no faith in LaValle, that he was strong enough to stand up and learn from what I had to teach, and you didn’t have no faith in me that I would reach out to that boy! I told you a thousand times, ‘Give him to me!’ Sho’ I was gon’ be tough on him! I’m tough on Jacques. A colored man’s got to be tough! I would have made the boy my son through time and sweat! Through time and sweat! And when I called him my son, he’d be proud and I’d be proud! But you didn’t trust him and you didn’t trust me! You let him run to you and hide behind yo’ skirts until he couldn’t face nothin’ and wasn’t worth nothin’. You done turned him into somethin’ that hangs on to apron strings in a world that needs men! You’s the problem!”

A car further up the hill on the opposite side of the streets flashed its lights twice. King flashed his lights once in return. The car pulled out of its parking space and drove past. King nodded to the men in the car. He turned back to Serena. “You see, you’s a small person inside and because of that you think everybody got to be small like you! He wasn’t my son, but I took him into my house. I promised you I would never tell him he’s not my son. I’m a man of my word. I kept my bond. But you couldn’t do the same for me. You kept quiet about my son and his mother bein’ in the DuMonts’ hands! Since you knew what they feel about the Tremains and me in particular, you knew that boy and his mother was in for some pain! Then when you found he was alive, you wouldn’t even try to reach out to my son. You let him get raised in an orphanage! That’s so cold-blooded there ain’t even a word for it! I ain’t clear whether you’s a weasel or a snake, but one thing’s for sho’: I don’t want you in my bed!”

Serena opened the door slowly and got out of the car. She walked up the stairs as if she were exhausted, closing the door without looking back.

As King drove away, he was certain that Serena wouldn’t untangle her hand from the rope for many years. She was going to continue being dragged and tossed by the bull until she was bruised and battered beyond recognition. Unfortunately for King, her pain was no consolation for the agony and disappointment that he was feeling. His desire for a large family of sons and daughters had irrevocably been crushed like an empty carton under his wife’s uncaring foot.

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Serena Tremain was having tea with Rosetta Hughes and Wydenia Witherspoon when the phone rang in the hall. Rosetta was in the middle of a story about a local pastor’s peccadillo with a prominent colored widow and Serena did not want to interrupt the story. She let it ring several times before she rose to pick it up. “Pardon me, Rosetta, I guess the people I pay to work here don’t feel that answering the phone is part of their duties.”

“I know what you mean, Rena,” Wydenia agreed with a nod of her head. “I have to stay on top of mine all the time!”

“Isn’t that the truth!” Rosetta said while sipping her tea. “It’s so hard finding good help! Sometimes I just have to get niggerish myself to whip them into line! I tell them, ‘Act your age, not your color!’ ” With the exception of her hair, Rosetta was just another drab, plain-looking, light-skinned woman, but her hair was a lustrous, wavy chestnut that fell to the middle of her back. It was her best feature and she knew it; over the years it had become part of her raison d’être for living.

“Some Negroes,” Wydenia confided, setting down her cup, “just because they’re working for their own, don’t want to do their best. And you know if these same folk were working for whites, they’d be on their p’s and q’s!”

“You know it, honey!” Rosetta confirmed. “Sometimes, you just got to give them both barrels!”

Serena walked into the hall, picked up the phone, and said, “Good morning!”

A strange voice with a thick southern accent issued from the receiver. “Is this Miz Tremain?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“I got somebody that wants to talk to you!”

“Who is this?” Serena demanded.

There was silence, then LaValle’s voice. “Mama? Mama, I’m in a bit of trouble!”

Serena looked back toward the parlor to make sure neither of her guests had followed her into the hall. She lowered her voice and asked, “What kind of trouble are you in, Val?”

“I owe some men some money, Mama.”

Serena took a deep breath. She sought to contain herself, but there was steel in her tone and its edge was sharp. “I thought I gave you the money to take care of that!”

“It’s a long story, Mama. I don’t have time to go into it right now.”

“Do you think I’m made out of money? That I have a pot of gold, that I can continue to pay for your foolishness?”

“Scold me later, Mama; these men want their money! As you often say, I can’t undo what’s already been done!”

“How much is it this time?”

“Two thousand dollars!”

Serena gasped; that amount of money would buy a very large house in an upper-middle-class white area. Still mindful of her guests she kept her voice low. “I just gave you five hundred dollars! How can you owe two thousand dollars now?”

“I’ll explain everything later, Mama! I need the money now!”

“Tell those men you’ll pay them later. I want to see your face as you explain this!”

“They won’t let me go, Mama, until they get their money!”

“Don’t they know who your father is?”

“Yes, but they say he don’t care about me. They say I ain’t even his son!”

It was the first time that LaValle had ever brought the subject up with Serena. His words had knocked over the container that held her fear and its icy contents had come spilling out, chilling her insides. “Let me talk to the one in charge!” she demanded.

There was a pause and the same strange voice issued from the phone. “You need to talk to who?”

“Who’s in charge? Who’s the boss? That’s who I want to talk with!”

“I’s the boss as far as this fool is concerned. He don’t get let go until we gets the money! If we don’t get the money by tomorrow, then we gon’ commence to hurt him!”

“You wouldn’t dare! Do you know who his father is?”

“King Tremain, but we ain’t talkin’ about Jack Tremain. Jack wouldn’t be caught dead doin’ the stupid things Val be doin’! We talkin’ about LaValle the chump who don’t look nothin’ like King! And you don’t never see him with King neither!”

“Well, I assure you King is very interested in the health of both of his sons! I warn you not to hurt LaValle!”

“You can warn all you want, but if we don’t get the money by tomorrow he gon’ have some broken legs and stuff befo’ this is over!”

Serena saw Rosetta Hughes step out into the hall. She put a smile on her face and waved at her guest. She spoke into the phone with her best business voice. “Where can my husband contact you, mister, uh? What is your name again?”

“Roosevelt Tisdale, but everybody know me as Rocky the Rock! We gon’ be behind the stables at the polo grounds! In the handler’s barn!”

“Fine, Mr. Tisdale, my husband will be contacting you soon!” Serena hung up without further word. She turned to Rosetta, in the hopes that the smile on her face did not seem contrived, and asked, “Did you need something, Rosetta?”

Rosetta walked down the hall toward Serena and fluffed out her long, wavy red hair. “Was somebody calling about your husband’s business?” She waited expectantly for an answer.

“Oh, it’s just some business meeting.”

“I don’t believe either Wydenia or I know exactly what type of business your husband’s in.” Rosetta continued to play with and primp her hair.

“Real estate. He buys a lot of property for development,” Serena answered with a casual shrug, but underneath her smiling exterior, she was irritated. She did not like having to answer Rosetta’s impudent questions. Nonetheless, Serena could not afford to alienate her guest. Rosetta, the wife of a prominent mortician, was a mover and shaker in colored society. She was on all the right committees and a member of all the right women’s clubs.

“Oh,” Rosetta said with a disbelieving shake of her head. Then a disingenuous smile appeared on her face. “Wydenia and I have several other things to do today. You know, so much to do and so little time, but we wanted to tell you the committee’s decision regarding your wish to be a judge in this year’s Colored Cotillion Ball.”

Serena thought for a minute: an hour one way or the other wouldn’t make too much difference to LaValle as long as he was freed before the deadline. “Why don’t we go back into the parlor?” Serena suggested. She suppressed her excitement. So much effort had been invested in the pursuit and attainment of this judgeship. If she was selected to judge the debutantes, it would be a real mark of acceptance by the social mavens of colored society. There was only one shadow over the brightness of her future and that shadow was cast by the recent actions of her husband, King Tremain.

Once they were seated in the parlor, Wydenia and Rosetta looked at each other doubtfully, expecting the other to begin first. King’s shadow passed over Serena’s heart and with it her elation faded. She knew that she had been rejected because of his actions last Saturday night at the Colored USO Dance.

Wydenia Witherspoon cleared her throat. “First, we’d like to convey the committee’s appreciation for the five-hundred-dollar donation that you gave during our Links Quadrille fund-raising campaign for the cotillion.”

“Yes, that was very impressive,” chimed in Rosetta, fluffing her hair. She owed her social position to her husband’s prominence—it was not something she had earned—but that fact did not prevent her from staring snobbishly down at others who were less fortunate.

“Our background investigation revealed that we were not the only socially active organization that you donated money to in our community,” Wydenia continued as she gave Serena a smile of encouragement. Wydenia was a caramel-colored woman and unlike her associate, Rosetta, had earned her position by dint of her will, wit, and ability to forge useful partnerships with lighter colored women who looked down on her because of the darkness of her skin. “We saw that you had volunteered and donated money for the Negro Sisters of Mercy, the Colored Children’s Baptist Fund, and the Young Negro Scholars College Scholarship Council. Your community work is very laudable.”

“Very laudable,” echoed Rosetta.

Wydenia continued as if Rosetta had not spoken. “The committee was impressed with your business acumen as well. In short, you were a truly well qualified candidate and you were a shoo-in, but—”

“A shoo-in,” interjected Rosetta. “But your husband!”

Wydenia coughed politely to get Rosetta’s attention, then said, “But the committee felt that all three judges had to be people of breeding and above reproach, people who the community knew because of their longtime involvement.”