When Everything's Said & Done (4 page)

“Really,” Brenda said, her eyes a bit too large. “Now look-a-there.” Annette tugged on Michael’s arm. “Brenda was always the first one of us to spot a good-looking guy.”

They laughed and walked toward the house. The clapping from the backyard was almost as loud as Stevie Wonder’s singing. When they reached the back Laura was standing at the gate. She had a handful of homemade sugar cookies. Nebia stood beside her.

“Hello, Miss Laura. Miss Nebia,” Michael said with respect. “I told Annette I’d be back. The party seems to be going good.”

“It is,” Laura said, wiping cookie crumbs from her mouth.

“Mama,” Annette said softly, “I thought the doctor told you not to eat any sweets.”

“This lit-a-bit of cookies is not going to hurt me,” Laura replied.

“Why aren’t you suppose to be eating any sweets?” Brenda’s forehead wrinkled with concern.

“The doctor says I got a touch of diabetes and I just need to lose a few pounds and watch what I eat. That’s all.”

“Diabetes!” Brenda repeated the word as if she had
never heard it before. “Why didn’t anybody tell me about this?”

“Because I knew you were going to act just like you’re acting now.” Laura leaned toward her. “But this isn’t the place or the time to talk about it. ” She turned to Michael. “How was Memphis?”

“Good. Memphis was good,” Michael said.

“It went real good, Mama,” Annette chirped. “Michael bought a car.”

“Is that right? What kind did you get?”

“It’s just an old Nova, Miss Laura. Something to get around in until I can get one of those small business loans I’ve been applying for.”

“Do it, girl. Come on, now,” erupted from behind them. Some of the guests had formed a semicircle on the grass. In the middle were two adolescents holding a wooden closet rod. Right now it was moonlighting as a really low limbo stick.

“All right. Here I go,” Cora warned as she tied her long, white linen dress in a knot between her thighs. Cora threw her arms out and leaned back. Her smile was wide and bright as she laughed at her own antics, and the ends of her beaded
corn rowed braids dangled above her shoulder blades. Cora shrieked when she couldn’t bend any further. She was on her butt, but her laugh was louder than anyone else’s.

“That’s my sister, Cora. Fresh from L.A.,” Annette explained.

Cora lifted her arms and a young man responded, pulling her up, off the ground. “Ohh,” she moaned and placed her palms against her butt cheeks, then started laughing again. Cora caught sight of her family and walked stiffly in their direction.

“Cora, when are you gon’ grow up?” Laura chastised her, but there was unadulterated love in her eyes.

“I am grown. Mama.” She threw an arm around her mother’s shoulders and gave her a hug, then started to whimper again. “Oh, my butt.”

“Is it broken?” Michael asked, smiling.

“I hope not. It’s still got a long, long way to go.” Cora replied.

Brenda shook her head. “Never mind her, Michael. She’s always been this way. No matter how we’ve tried to teach her better. And since she’s been living in Cali
fornia she’s worse than ever.”

“O-o-kay. So that’s how it is, huh?” Cora looked Michael up and down. “I gather this is somebody I am suppose to impress.”

“This is Michael, Cora.” Annette gave her the eye. “The one who moved upstairs in the efficiency.” “Michael.” Cora nodded her understanding. “Now I get it. All right. Let’s start over.” Cora turned her back to them, untied her dress and smoothed out the wrinkles. When she faced them again she offered Michael a regal hand in greeting. “How are you, Michael?”

“Just fine, thank you.” He grinned.

“So you’re the man who stole my baby sister’s heart,” she accused with a straight face.

“Cor-ra,” Annette howled.

Michael let go a throaty laugh. “Is that what I’ve done? I hadn’t heard it put that way before.”

“Cora doesn’t
like to beat around the bush—” Brenda gave her a pinch “—^no matter how rude it might be.”

Cora jumped. “But of course I could always count on Brenda to let me know when I was being rude.” She picked up a Styrofoam cup with ice in it and popped a small cube in her mouth. “Still, what else is family for if they can’t cool you down when you need it?” With double action speed Cora dropped another ice cube down Brenda’s back and flicked the water from her fin
gers into Annette’s face before she broke into a run. Brenda and Annette dashed after her.

The party went on for a few more hours; it was al
most midnight before the outdoor festivities fizzled out. Afterward, a few guests went inside and played Tunk, Spades and Bid Whist. Then, when everyone had gone home, Brenda and Laura finished things up in the kitchen, while Cora and Annette put her graduation presents away upstairs.

“It sure is good to have all three of you here at the same time again,” Laura said as she dried a Pyrex dish.

“It is good, isn’t it?” Brenda took the dish from her mother and placed it in the cabinet.

“I don’t know how long Cora’s gon’ stay this time. But you’ll be here for quite a while, won’t you?”

“I sure will. I’ve got to find me a job, though. I’m going to pick up some applications from downtown on Monday. I already applied for a job in Tampa and one in Sarasota.”

“Well, you know you’re welcome to stay as long as you need to. Now that Annette has graduated, I guess it won’t be long before all of you are married and gone,” Laura said with a distant look in her eyes.

“Lord, can you imagine Cora married with babies?” Brenda shook her head. “I can’t.”

“You know—” Laura thought about it “—^I can. I think Cora would make a good mother if she settled down and put her mind to it. Now when will that be? That’s a whole different subject. Only the Lord and Cora know.” Laura looked up at the ceiling.

“Now that dress is going to look good on you, girl,” Cora said as Annette hung the gift inside her closet. “Maybe you can wear it for Michael one day. Put some fire under him.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? I thought you liked him.”

Annette turned around slowly and looked at her sis
ter. “I think I love him. And Cora, it’s the first time I’ve ever been in love.”

“Well isn’t this a trip?” Cora replied. “This is the first time my baby sister has beat me to the punch in anything.” “You’ve never been in love?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But
what about all those men you’ve been with? You mean you didn’t love them?” She was shocked. “Fornication is a sin anyway, but to think you were fornicating and weren’t even in love...that’s worse.”

“All what men? You make it sound like I’ve been to bed with the whole state of California.”

“Well how many were there?”

Cora sat back. “You’re not suppose to ask me that.” Annette looked down. “I used to be able to ask you anything. ”

“And you still can, Annie.” Cora tugged at her sister’s hand and made her sit down beside her. “I’ve had a few men—” she looked into Annette’s eyes “—^but not nearly as many as people would like to believe. You don’t always have to sleep with a man for him to treat you good. Do things for you. You just have to make them want to.”

“How do you do that?” Annette watched Cora’s face intently.

“By making them believe that eventually they will sleep with you.”

“But that’s just as bad.”

“Don’t you want to sleep with Michael?”

“I thought about it, but I put it out of my mind be
cause I’m not gonna sleep with anybody without being married to them. ”

“All right. There’s nothing wrong with that. It might be a little boring, and you won’t know the quality of the goods that you’re getting until you buy them, but that’s the chance that you take when you want to be holy and everything.”

“I’m not trying to be holy. I just want to do the right thing in the eyes of God.”

“Who knows what’s in God’s eyes?” Cora waved her hand. “Everything is. The hooker. The nun. The mur
derer and the priest.”

“Oh, Cora. I don’t know how we see things so dif
ferent. We grew up in the same house together with the same mama.”

“I know how. While you were reading the Bible and taking every opportunity you could to go to that church across town, I was observing the people around me, like Nebia and that woman who was always getting into cars with different men at the corner of Seventh and Central.” “That woman was a prostitute,” Annette retorted. “And some of the folks around here call Nebia a voodoo woman.”

“Pleeze.” Cora sucked her teeth. “Either way, I still watched and wondered why some people saw life one way, and others saw it another. I finally decided, it’s because if you never step outside the circle of things that folks have decided you should learn, or be, there’s so much of life you miss because you make that your whole world. I decided to step out, Annette. That’s all.” Cora picked up a package of windowpane stockings. “But you know what I believe most of all?”

“What?” Annette looked at her sister with uncertainty.

“That the world needs folks like you and like me, and all the other people that we find to be so different. I think we balance each other out.”

“I wonder if I’ll every marry Michael,” Annette fluc
tuated back to the subject that dominated her thoughts.

“And if you’ll ever get to have sex with him?” Cora hedged.

“Yeah,” Annette laughed.

Nebia’s Story...

“Sounds like everybody was fine to me,” Cynthia concluded. “I mean, they weren’t arguing over Michael or anything.”

“Everything was good for quite a while,” Nebia said. “And Michael was always in the Robinsons’ apart
ment. Laura liked that because that way she could keep an eye on him and Annette. Not that she was really worried about her because Laura knew Annette was deeply religious. But after a while, we all got the feeling that although Michael cared for Annette, he felt she had some growing up to do, and he wasn’t about to rush her. So, yes, things were real good around here for a while.” Nebia hummed softly and the women waited for her to speak again.

“Finally, Annette decided she wasn’t going away for school. Instead she was going to go to the local college. That was okay with Laura, although she believed An
nette might have gone out of state if it wasn’t for Michael. So Annette made preparations to start college that fall, but she was always complaining that she didn’t feel useful just working on something that would better her own future. She felt like she should be doing more for others.”

“Did she find something else?” Sheila asked. Nebia closed her eyes and sat quiet for a moment, before she said, “She most certainly did.”

CHAPTER 5

Without looking, Cora’s fingers worked at the last plait on Annette’s head. Annette was seated on the floor between her legs. Both their gazes were focused on the television screen. Cora looked away to find the afro-pic. She grabbed it and started picking out An
nette’s hair. “This is why I got my hair braided out in L.A.,” she said. “Braiding my ’fro at night and taking it down in the mornings was too much work for me.” “Is it on yet?” Brenda asked as she came down the stairs with the hair grease.

Annette glanced at her. “Not yet.” She looked back at the television. “But, it will be on any minute now.” Then the familiar image of an animated train, puff
ing smoke, and moving on down the track filled the screen. “The So-o-ul Train” boomed through the set, and Cora, Brenda and Annette added their own version of, “Do-do-do-do-do-do-o Do Do!” as their favorite Saturday-morning program began.

“Do you think Don Cornelius ever gets excited?” Brenda asked as the low-key commentator appeared.

“No,” Cora quickly replied. Cornelius announced Saturday’s guests before another commercial began.

“When you were in L.A. did you ever try to get on Soul
Train!” Brenda inquired as she sat down on the other end of the couch.

“I thought about it, but—”

“Hush! Hush!” Annette cut her off. “This must be that commercial that they were talking about at church a couple of weeks ago.”

Cora fell silent as images of starving African babies and children with bloated stomachs filled the T.V. screen. Their eyes were devoid of life but had so much discharge that they attracted flies.

“Ahh, that’s awful,” Brenda said and turned away.

“It is, isn’t it?” Cora agreed.

“What is it?” Laura stepped through the front door as a familiar face appeared on the television. It was Gloria from the sitcom All In The Family using her real name and asking for help and donations for the needy children.

“It’s horrible.” Annette’s voice shook. “Just horrible. We need to do something about it.”

Once again the T.V. screen filled with the Soul Train dancers in platform shoes, hot pants and halter tops.

“The best you can do is work on yourself,” Laura said as she headed for the kitchen. “I just saw Lucille. She told me they got a letter from Warren today. He’s in Germany.”