The Wilful Daughter (29 page)

“
We can raise both babies, they’ll be so close in age it won’t be a problem.”

“
Tell that to your benefactor. Tell my father that. Didn’t you listen to the great Blacksmith’s plans? You were not to get her with child until this one was born. Didn’t he pay you enough to prevent this?” She ran to her room, locking the door to keep him out.

She would keep her baby. She would keep the child and stay here on this beautiful farm. She would sleep alone for the rest of her life and not go to juke joints and clubs and just be with her child. She could find some handsome uneducated farm hand to marry her. She would be a good wife. She didn’t need her father’s money and she didn’t need the Piano Man’s love.

June cried herself to sleep.

“
He told you,” Minnelsa said as they sat on the porch before dinner and watched Michael standing beside Peter trying to understand the automobile.

“
Yes,” June was busy knitting.

“
I’m sorry, but I’m happy too. I just think that papa was asking too much.”

June looked at her sister. “Papa’s always asks too much.” A thought suddenly occurred to June as she watched her sister glow in the light of married bliss. “What is supposed to happen with my baby? Should I leave it in a field somewhere?”

“
June, you always have such a flip mouth. Peter and I can still raise it as our own. We can. . .”

June went into the huge empty parlor. Minnelsa followed. “That won’t work, Minnelsa, or have you forgotten? My child will be a half year older than yours.”

Minnelsa didn’t speak for a moment. “We’ve thought about this carefully, June. We won’t go back to Atlanta for a long time. Peter said that was best.”

That was about all June could take. “I don’t give a damn what Peter said. Peter does not run my life. It’s bad enough that our father has made all the decisions for us.”

“
He did what was best for us.” Minnelsa pleaded.

“
No, big sister. He did what was best for him. He doesn’t care about us. He married you off to Peter to cover his tracks. So that this baby would not be an embarrassment to him.”

Minnelsa smiled in protest. “Peter and I were always going to get married.”

June wanted to cry thinking of the first time she had ever crossed paths with Peter, her Peter, her Piano Man. “Maybe if papa had left things alone. Papa bought him, paid him off in land and a pretty wife to make his life easier in this world.”

June turned to walk away but not before Minnelsa grabbed her arm and swung her around so fast June had to collapse on one of the sofas to break her fall. Her sister’s face had turned stern.

“
Not one word from you, do you understand? Not one word or I might kill you myself, you selfish little brat.” June remained silent as she watched Minnelsa try to compose herself into the meek lady who wore gloves wherever she went, and the right hat and never spoke above a whisper. “Nobody, especially you, is going to ruin my happiness.” June sat on the sofa as her sister spoke.

“
I am happy, June, do you hear? For the first time in my life I am happy, very happy. I have someone who wants and loves me. And I am as far away from papa as I could get from being the Blacksmith’s old maid daughter and your old maid sister. You,” and she was so close June could feel her sister’s breath still sweet from yams and smoked ham, “You have never suffered, have never been in love. You have done everything you wanted, did everything wrong, everything bad, and you got away with it. I loved one man a little too much, the wrong man according to our father, and I was stuck in his house for an eternity. Then a man comes to get me, to love me. Maybe that man is influenced by the money, the color of my skin, the fact that my father is important. But he comes and he gets me out. And because you have to be a whore and go sleep with some stranger, you almost ruined everything for me.”

Minnelsa grew calmer. She folded her hands in what seemed like prayer but June could see she was trying to find words. The poet, June thought, the one who had made her keep a journal when she was a child, the one who wrote all the business letters for their father, could not think of the words.

All Minnelsa could find to say was: “You always get what you want.”

June rose moving away from her sister. “I never got what I wanted, sister. I didn’t want this.”

“
I don’t believe you.” Minnelsa turned to look out the window at Peter and Michael.

“
I wanted to marry my baby’s father. I wanted him to want to marry me, not get me this way first, but he didn’t want me. I wanted Willie to go to Florida with the art teacher so that I could have gone with him to take care of him. And I never wanted to live without Willie. When he died, I wanted to die. But I’m here, stuck in Alabama big and pregnant and I definitely didn’t want that. So don’t ever say I always get what I want.” The curtain near Minnelsa moved as a hot wind blew through their silence.

The older sister’s words floated on that wind cooling them down. “I’d be a good mother to your child.”

“
I never said you wouldn’t be, Minnelsa. But the babies, their ages. When you go back to Atlanta people will. . .”

“
I’m never going back to live in Atlanta. Never.” She touched the window as she smiled and watched the Piano Man with the boy.

“
But papa expects. . ..”

“
I said before, and you said it a lot: papa expects too much.” Again she turned to her sister. “Look, you don’t have to go back either. You can stay here with Fannie and Ella. Or you can go to school at Tuskegee and get on with your life. I’m sure papa will give you the money to finish school. And I’m sure papa will be glad to keep you away. When he finds out I’m pregnant he’ll do anything to keep both of us away.”

June watched her sister trace the figure of the Piano Man in the window. “Have you told him what you want to do? Does Peter know about not going back to Atlanta? I mean papa may make him give up the precious land he gave him.”

“
Papa’s not going to do anything of the kind, June. He may have bought me a husband but I know how to keep him.

“
I’m going to have a life on my own, June. Me, my husband, our baby.” She touched her belly then her sister’s as she smiled. Then she put her arm around June. “Your baby, if you want. I have a home now. It isn’t like the house we grew up in but there is love there. I can feel it. And you, little sister, can stay with me as long as you like.”

June looked out at the Piano Man, sleeves rolled up and talking to Michael like a father. She looked at Minnelsa whose face glowed in love as she watched him. He made her happy.

June wanted her mother. All she could feel was Bira kissing her good-bye before she got in the car with Fannie and drove off for the train.

It was nice to have Minnelsa and to see her happy. But June wanted her mother.

* * *

They had the room down the hall and June couldn’t sleep thinking of what they were doing in that room. What they had done so far to get Minnelsa with child. What Minnelsa had learned in a few months of marriage to be able to, as she put it, keep her husband. How had June ever loved him? How had she ever thought he would love her and want to be with her?

On the day she realized she was late she had run to Willie’s room to tell him. So soon she forgot the room had been emptied except for the desk and the bed. The easel bore no picture. She sat on the unmade bed and thought of all the nights she had come in to share her hopes and dreams with him. Without Willie to advise her of the outcome of her nights with the Piano Man she was not sure what she was to do. Instead of being sad she sank in memory.

Her favorite one was planning the future the night before they found out their father was not even considering letting Willie go to Florida with the art teacher.

“
He says he lives near the ocean.” Willie had been excited as he brushed her hair. “Imagine painting the ocean. I wonder if it’s really as blue as books say.”

June had selfishly not paid attention and asked: “How are you going to convince him to take me? I can’t paint.”

His excitement grew. “Oh that’s easy. You have to come with me to take care of me.”

“
To cook and do your clothes, Willie? You know I’m terrible at that.”

“
No,” he laughed when he said it. “And this is brilliant. You are my companion and model. All great artists have models and companions. He would have to take you or I’d pull a fit.”

June laughed at him. “You? A temper tantrum?”

Willie blushed but had to smile at the thought. “No, silly. Well yes, but artists have tempers. They have fits of jealousy, passion and rage. That and immense suffering makes them better artists.”

They had both been so happy. He would have been happy about the baby, too. He would have figured out a way to get past papa to make Peter marry her.

Or he would have honestly told her that Peter was not the right man for her and let him have Minnelsa.

That’s what Willie would have told her. To forget Peter.

But how many times before he died had he tried to tell her that?

She had lost the pleasure of thinking about being a mother, having a child of her own, when Peter walked Minnelsa home, kissed her good night as the sisters peeked out the window, and the reality that this would never happen became clear.

That night Ross had called on her to go for a ride in his new automobile. She despised Ross with his flip ways but she needed the escape. So with papa’s permission, for a change, she went off for a short ride.

When she could no longer stand Ross pawing her and trying to prove that he was the best man for her, that he should be her first, she asked him: “What do you do when you get a girl in the family way, Ross? Besides dump her?”

The question unnerved him. “What have you heard?” He lit a cigarette then blew smoke rings in the air as if he didn’t care.

“
I’ve heard nothing. But I know someone who has a problem. You know what kind of problem and I figured you were the right person to ask.”

“
It’s a woman’s problem,” he said calmly. But she knew more than one girl had been taken to a place outside of town by the young handsome fool. “You go to a woman. A woman that’s got the ways.”

She couldn’t ask which woman for she wasn’t sure yet and she didn’t want him to guess. But she would always remember how casual he was about the child he might have made being destroyed with or without his permission. “It’s a woman’s problem,” remained with her.

Now the couple was down the hall and she couldn’t sleep. They were sleeping in the same bed, their bodies touching with no one to say they were wrong. She had let him have her, touch her, lie on her until she had wanted to scream with delight, but they had never slept together. Never had more than a few moments of passion.

She looked at the ceiling and watched the shadows of the trees as they danced in the moonlight. Do they make sounds, she wondered, sounds of delight and joy? Was Minnelsa quiet about her passion? Did she wear gloves?

June laughed. She laughed and laughed until she noticed that her laughter had turned into crying. She wanted to sleep with someone who loved her. She wanted to sneak down the hall and sit outside their room until she heard them making love, until she could imagine them touching in the same moonlight that made the shadows of the trees dance. She cried until sleep rescued her from the loneliness she had been feeling since the day her mother left her there.

In the dawn everything was all right. They were leaving, going back to Tuskegee. They were going to leave her alone until time for the baby. And then. . .

What was she going to do after the baby?

She made the biscuits for breakfast and both Peter and Minnelsa praised her new culinary skills. Ella packed them a lunch and told them to come back soon. June was nowhere to be found when they drove away.

She was down by the pond wishing she knew how to swim, her feet dangling in the murky cool water and wishing she could just take off everything and go in.

“
Millie say you can’t swim.” She heard a voice and turned. Michael stood there. Shirtless in his overalls looking like one of the young bronze gods Willie had painted.

She smiled. “Not many places for me to go to swim in Atlanta. Wish I knew how.”

“
I could teach you.” Then he thought to add: “After the baby, I could teach you.” She smiled and said nothing. “I . . . they sent me to fetch you. Your sister and her husband is leaving.”

“
I know. I don’t like to say good-byes.” She kicked the water and looked at him carefully. He was perhaps two years younger than her at the most. But next to her he looked older.

She looked at his handsome black face and saw through his youth. Michael could read and saw no need to be further educated. After all he knew his fields, his odd jobs, his place in this neat little society that Fannie and Ella had started years ago.

“
What you gonna do after the baby comes?” He had never talked to her this much before.

“
What do you mean?” she asked turning from him, trying to remember what it was like to have a young man stare at her. Could he see past her belly to her beauty? She took the pins out of her hair and started to unbraid it. She could hear him breathing hard and steady as if the heat was straining him.