The Summer We Got Free (19 page)

Mother
Haley had been dead four years, but she stood in the kitchen, by the stove,
wearing the hat and dress she had been buried in. Regina had been at the
refrigerator, taking the meat out for dinner, when the ghost appeared.
Startled, she had dropped the package of ground beef onto the floor. “What in
the world are you doing here?” Regina asked her.

Mother
Haley glared at her and the white feather in her white hat trembled.

Regina squinted at the apparition. “Don’t look at me
like that, old woman.” She was trying to sound unafraid, but really she was
terrified. Ghosts in general didn’t scare her. But this one was glowing almost
red and Regina could feel a fury rising into the air, the temperature in the
kitchen rising with it. “You got something to say, say it.”

Mother Haley took a quick step towards Regina and just
as Regina screamed, the spirit disappeared. Hurried footsteps came from every
direction and Sarah, Ava, and Helena all burst into the kitchen.

“Mama, what’s wrong?” Sarah asked her.

“That old woman,” Regina said. “She was here.”

“Who?” Ava asked. “Mama, who are you talking about?”

“Mother Haley.”

Helena looked at Ava. “Your grandmother?”

“She was right there,” Regina said, pointing at the
stove. “She came at me.”

“I saw Kenny,” Sarah said.

They all turned and looked at her.

“A few days ago. He was there when I woke up.”

“I saw Miss Maddy,” Ava told them. She had seen the
ghost of Maddy
Duggard
on the night she had almost
wet herself laughing and she had been too embarrassed by that entire incident
to want to refer back to it later. Miss Maddy had been standing at the top of
the steps when Ava had come out of the bathroom.

Helena peered at her, frowning, and Ava could tell
that she didn’t believe in ghosts.

Ava picked up the ground beef from the floor and put
it back into the refrigerator. They all sat down at the table and, for a little
while, nobody spoke. Then Helena asked Ava, “Who was that man with your
father?”

“Chuck Ellis. He used to live down the street.”

Regina paused in lighting a cigarette. “What about
Chuck Ellis?”

“He was here,” Ava told her.

“What you mean,
here
?”

“I mean here, Mama, in this house.”

“Deacon Ellis was
here
?”
Sarah asked.

Regina leaned forward in her chair. “When was this?”

“A little while ago. Before you got home.”

“He’s a friend of Mr. Delaney’s?” Helena asked.

“He was,” Sarah said. “When we were little we called
him Uncle Chuck. They
was
always together. Then he
stopped coming around.”

“Because of Pastor Goode?”

Sarah shook her head. “It was years before that.
Wasn’t it, Mama?”

“Well, what was he doing here?” Regina asked.

Ava shrugged. “I have no idea. They came in while we
were out back.”

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” Sarah asked. “I mean,
one of
them
coming into this house,
and not even to start no trouble? I know he don’t live on this block no more,
but he still go to church there. For him to come in this house at all, that
must mean something.”

“What?” Regina asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe somebody finally figuring out
Pastor Goode been wrong all this time.”

“I doubt that’s why he came in here,” Regina said.

“Well, why then?”

Regina didn’t answer. She got up from the table,
feeling suddenly crowded, and left the kitchen. Up in her bedroom, she turned
on the small black and white television that sat on top of the dresser, then
removed her shoes, and sat with her legs stretched out on the bed. She smoked
and watched the evening news, and tried not to think.

*

After Mother Haley appeared and disappeared again, the
house was so hot that no one wanted to cook dinner. Instead, they searched the
refrigerator and the cupboards for anything they could make that did not require
real cooking, and settled on canned sardines and green beans, and bread. Paul
was not working the night shift, so he was there in time for dinner for the
first time in days. He spread butter on his bread and then passed the butter
dish to Ava.

“I looked at a
house today,” he said.

Regina looked up
from her sardines. “
You been
looking at houses again?”

He nodded.

She looked at
Ava. “You changed your mind about moving?”

Ava shook her
head. “No, I haven’t.”

“You will. Once
you see this place and see how good a fit it is for us. It aint even that far
away from here.”

“Where’s it at?”
Sarah asked.

“Over on Pine
and Fifty-Third.”

“That aint but
what?” Regina asked. “Nine, ten blocks?”

“That’s right.”
Paul looked at Ava. “You be able to come and see your folks every day if you
want to.”

Ava spread
butter on her bread and said nothing.

“Well, what’s the house like?” Helena asked.

“It’s nice. Not
too big. Just the right size for us, I think. It’s even some extra room, in
case, you know, we ever had kids or something.”

“Well, that’s
good,”
Regina
said. “It
sound
nice.”

He looked at Ava
again. “The lady who showed it to me said she’d be glad to set up a time for us
to go see it together. Maybe Saturday?”

Ava was aware
that they were all looking at her, but she was watching the butter, seeing the
way its color changed as it softened on the bread and how the light from the
fixture above the table caught in the tiny bubbles of butterfat, making them
gleam.

“Ava, I know you hear me talking to you,” Paul said.

She looked at
him, annoyed. “First you’re looking at houses when you know I aint moving, and
now you’re talking about kids you know I can’t have. Yes, I hear you talking,
but what you’re saying doesn’t seem to have a whole lot to do with me.”

“We
are
moving,” he said. “
Goddamnit
. I been in this house four years, Ava, and I
don’t want to be in it no more.”

“Maybe y’all
should talk about this in private,” Helena said.

He glared at his
sister. “We talked about it in private a hundred times.
It
aint nothing else to say.
We moving and that’s the end of it.”

“Paul—”

“Stay out of it,
Helena,” he said, his voice rising. “It aint got nothing to do with you.”

Ava brought the
buttered bread to her lips, and the heavy, fatty smell of it filled her up. The
moment the butter entered her mouth, the second it melted on her tongue, she
knew she had not tasted it before, not really, not in a very long time. The
taste was overwhelming, cream-thick and
heavy-rich
,
and devastating. Lush, and heaven, it caused her eyes to close and her head to
fall back, and a pleasure like none she could right then remember coursed
through her, starting between her legs and moving down into her thighs, and up
into her stomach, spreading over every inch of her, building like a slow, hot
thing, like a fever. When it reached the tips of her fingers, she dropped her
fork, and only vaguely heard it clang against her plate.

“You alright,
baby?” Paul asked her.

She nodded, but
could not speak. The pleasure grew and she felt something deep within herself
coming up, and she thought, for a moment, that it was laughter, but when she
opened her throat there came a moan, long and wonderful and obscene. Suddenly,
she remembered being thirteen, standing in a small, dark room in Blessed Chapel
Church, in the bishop’s nook, behind the pulpit, with her mouth pressed against
another girl’s mouth. And now the fever, high and hot, suddenly broke, through
her skin and out the tips of her toes, from her nipples, which hardened and
tingled, and off her tongue, the tip of which pressed against the roof of her
mouth. She grabbed the edges of the tablecloth and squeezed her eyelids tight,
and grunted, like an animal, like a woman, and the pleasure screamed and
crested, and then, in a moment, turned her loose, leaving her trembling.

When she opened
her eyes, her family members were staring at her, her sister looking mortified,
her husband embarrassed but also a little excited, and her mother confused.
Helena looked like she was trying not to laugh, biting her bottom lip as her
green eyes twinkled.

Paul cleared his
throat, but didn’t say anything.

Ava took a deep
breath and let go of
the bunches
of tablecloth in her
fists. She smiled at Paul. “I’m sorry, what were you saying?”

“I…I was just
asking you to come see it. The house.”

“Alright,” Ava
said, not because she wanted to see the house, but because she felt better, in
that moment, than she had ever felt before and she wanted to say yes to
somebody.

The phone rang and Ava bounced up to answer it. The
voice on the other end spoke in a whisper. “The Lord,” it said, “will hand you
over to me, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head.”

Ava sighed and hung up. She returned to the table,
frowning.

“Who was it?” Regina asked.

“I don’t know.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Stop being mysterious for no
reason, Ava. What did they say?”

“Something about striking us down and cutting off our
heads. Or maybe just mine. It wasn’t clear and I didn’t think to ask.”

“
Goddamnit
,” Paul said. “Why
didn’t you give me the phone?”

“Somebody threatened you?” Helena asked, her voice
full of shock and worry.

“
It’s
just words,” Ava said, sitting down again.

Helena did not
look relieved. “Have these people ever done anything? Besides throw bricks
through your window? Have they ever been violent?”

“Not in years,”
Regina said. “And you don’t want to know about none of that.”

Helena looked at
Ava. “Tell me.”

“The worst thing
they ever did,” Ava said, “was
start
a fire.”

“But it was
fifteen years ago,” Regina said, “and they aint done nothing like that since.”

Helena shook her
head, slowly, from side to side, and after a few moments asked, “Was anybody
hurt?”

“Yes,” Regina
said, sighing heavily. “Somebody died. My friend. Maddy. My best friend.” And
here was another thing Regina had not talked about in years, another old thing
brought out into the light again.

“Please tell me
somebody was caught.”

They answered
that question with silence.

She looked
around at all of them. “I can’t believe you stayed here after that.”

“I had more
reason than ever to stay after that,” Regina said. “Maddy was one of the only
people on this block who never turned against us.
Her and
Jane Lucas.
Jane moved away, because they didn’t like it that she kept
on talking to us and wouldn’t give her no peace.” She sighed. “Maddy stayed.
And she died trying to help us, trying to get us out of the house after they
started the fire. And we did get out.”

“But she didn’t?
She burned?”

“She didn’t burn.
She fell down the stairs and broke her neck.”

Helena got up
from the table. She walked over to the stove,
then
paced back, looking disturbed. “Who are these people?” she asked. “Who exactly
is making these threats, and throwing these bricks, and starting these fires?
All your neighbors can’t be arsonists.”

“No, it aint all
of them,” Regina said. “Most of them don’t do nothing more than stare and
whisper. It’s only a handful of them that holler things, or leave notes in the
door, or make phone calls. And it’s just one or two that do more than that,
when the pastor tell them to. One of them is Malcolm Hansberry. He
live
in that green house right across the street and he used
to be our good friend. The other is his brother, Vic Jones. He
live
down at the corner. And I know what you thinking. If I
know who they
is
, why don’t I tell the police? Well, I
have told them. But since I aint never seen none of them doing nothing, it aint
a thing the police can do. They got the pastor and this whole block ready to
say they was doing something else when whatever happened
happened
.”

“There must be
something
you can do,” Helena said,
sounding frustrated.

Regina sighed.
“Well, if you think of something, honey, you let us know.”

That evening Paul sat with Helena on the back porch,
smoking, and noticed that she was quiet, pensive and distracted, her eyes
burdened behind her thick glasses. Instead of asking her what was wrong, he
watched her a while, trying to figure out what might be on her mind. When they
were children, he had been good at doing that, at looking at her and seeing
what was wrong. Back then, he knew everything about her, or mostly everything,
and he could usually identify the source of any pain or upset she felt. Whether
she was crying because somebody had called her tar baby at school, or was
knocking things over, clumsily, because she always slept badly at night and
spent the daytime in a fog. He could always tell, because he knew her. Back
then. Now, sitting out on the back porch, stealing glimpses of her as she
smoked and looked up at the few stars that could be seen in the city sky, he could
only assume what the cause of her quiet was.