Blonde Faith

17

I was sitting at the kitchenette table a few minutes shy of 6:30 when the baby cried. I was considering which problem I should tackle first. I had Christmas’s most recent address from the bill of sale that Tourmaline had provided and two soldiers I could look up. I knew that Pericles Tarr had a girlfriend somewhere. Each of these potential paths had equal weight in my mind.

If I had had a clue about the whereabouts of Mouse, that’s the direction I would have taken.

I was missing Ray, not because he could help me through this violent period but for his sense of humor. He liked to laugh and tell a good story. Added to that, Mouse didn’t understand guilt or broken hearts — that was just the kind of ignorance I craved.

“Hi, Dad.”

Jesus was standing in the kitchen with Essie in his arms. I reached out for her without thinking about it. She cried and then cooed. After getting used to my smell, she practiced kicking and turning her head from side to side.

Jesus went about making coffee.

I had had almost fifteen years of that boy brewing me coffee and bringing me the gifts of life. He’d been brutally abused when he was little older than his daughter, but somehow that had not twisted him. I would have liked to say that it was my firm hand and loving home that saved the boy, but he was the one who saved me more often than not. It was Jesus that emptied all my liquor bottles when my first wife left. It was Jesus made me coffee and dinner more times than I could count.

And now he had brought me a granddaughter. Here we couldn’t have a gene in common going back more than twenty thousand years, but that boy was my blood.

He brought two mugs to the table and took Essie from me. The way he cradled that baby made me think of the few years he spent with my friend Primo before coming to me. Maybe the Mexican and his Panamanian wife, Flower, had saved Jesus’s soul.

“Feather said that you’re mad at her,” my son said.

“I’m not.”

“She said that she gave you a hard time about the wedding and that, and that you got mad.”

Essie grabbed his lip and pulled, just a little.

“You remember when you were a boy?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“You remember when you didn’t talk those first years, never spoke a word?”

Jesus looked at me, mute as he was back in those days.

“Why?” I asked. “Why didn’t you talk for all that time?”

“I did,” he said in a voice reminiscent of his first whispering years of conversation. “I did with my mind. I was thinking answers and I thought you could hear me. And you did, Dad. You knew everything I wanted to say.”

“So why ever talk, then?” I asked.

“One day when Feather was little and you were at work, she was about to knock over a hot pot, and I wasn’t close enough so I told her no.”

The look on my son’s face was one of fascination. He was remembering that word.

“It surprised both of us,” he said. “Feather’s jaw dropped and her eyes got real big. It felt like I opened my mouth and a bird, a big bird flew out. I wondered if there were any more inside of me, and then Feather ran up and hugged me and told me to read her a story.”

I had never asked about Juice’s first word. I was afraid that to question his speech would have returned him to silence.

“Are you mad at Feather?” he asked.

“No. I just can’t understand when she stopped being a child and started bein’ a woman. That’s what’s got me.”

“I don’t think Bonnie wants to marry him,” Jesus said, as if it were the logical extension of our talk.

“No? She don’t love him?”

“No,” the boy-sage replied. “She loves him. He loves her and needs her, and so she can see them together. But if you had ever called her, she would have come back here to us.”

“So then let me ask you, Juice,” I said. “Are you mad at me?”

Essie made a sound akin to a laugh. Jesus stared at me like the man he’d always been.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m with Benita and off on my boat half the time. Feather talks to Bonnie every other day. Bonnie has Joguye, and even though she wants you, that’s something.”

It felt as if each declarative phrase was a nail driven into my coffin. I wanted to tell him to stop talking, but I had asked the question.

“Mr. Rawlins?”

Easter Dawn was my savior. She wore a plaid skirt that Feather had outgrown years before and a white silk T-shirt. Her black hair was tied back with a yellow ribbon, also of silk. Her shoes were black, her socks white, and there was a pink Cracker Jack plastic ring on the forefinger of her right hand. On her shoulder was hung the fancy briefcase-like satchel.

“Aren’t we dressed up,” I said, lifting the tiny eight-year-old and putting her on my lap.

“Feather said I could wear her old clothes,” Easter confessed, the hint of guilt in her voice.

“And you look beautiful in them.”

The child smiled at me and clasped her hands.

“I want to go to school,” she said.

“You do? Don’t you like being on vacation?”

“No. And I want to be in school. My daddy says that school is bad, that it makes people bad, but Feather and Juice are nice and they went to school. And anyway, Feather has to stay home every day to take care of me and she’s missing her tests.”

“Hm. Yeah. I guess you’re right. Okay. Go get your sister, and I’ll take you off to school at about eight.”

As E.D. ran toward the back of the house, I thought about calling Feather her sister. I suppose I was preparing for the worst. I had been training for disaster as far back as I could remember.

I DROVE the girls to school. Feather went off to the library to study, and I brought E.D. to the office. There I encountered Mrs. Canfield.

She had a decade on me, all of it traveled on a rutted, hardscrabble road. She was a white woman, but her coloring had some liver to it. Her mouth hadn’t known mirth, maybe ever, and her eyes gave you the impression that you were the most worthless person in the world.

After I told her my name and she told me hers, I said, “I’m Feather’s father.”

“Oh,” she said haughtily. “Feather called in days ago. She said that there was a family emergency and that you would call. But my records show no such call.”

“I was dealing with the emergency,” I said.

“Education is the most important part of a child’s life, Mr. Rawlins. If you cannot take that seriously, how can your children hope to make it in this world?”

It was the wrong morning for us to meet. I was an American Negro. And while not being a Rochester stereotype or a white-lipped minstrel clown, I was quite aware of how to deal with people like Mrs. Canfield. Don’t get me wrong: she wasn’t looking down on me because of race. She was in her seat of power and would have lectured Lyndon Baines Johnson had he wandered into her court. And Lyndon could have learned something from my long experience. I could have told him that the way to deal with Canfield was to say, Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry, ma’am. You are right, ma’am.

That’s what I should have said, but it wasn’t the day for it.

“Really?” I replied. “It seems to me that health, food on the table, love, and shelter would come before a child could ever think about reading a book. I mean, how could you expect an ailing, hungry child to come in here and take your tests? Do you serve free lunches here, Mrs. Canfield?”

The edge on her gaze could have cut diamonds.

“What is it that you want of me, Mr. Rawlins?”

“I want to enroll this child in school.”

“She doesn’t look like your child.”

After speaking, the school administrator sat back a little. Her sharp eyes had caught a hint of the violence in my posture.

Before I could come up with the appropriate lie, Mrs. Canfield added, “In order to enroll a child in this school, you will need her birth certificate, inoculation history, and proof of guardianship.”

“I can have all that by next week.”

“Bring her back then.”

Easter Dawn pulled on the sleeve of my dark gray jacket.

“I thought you wanted all kids in school all the time?” I said.

“This is not your child.”

Easter pulled on my sleeve again.

“We’re talking, honey,” I said.

“Look in here, Mr. Rawlins.” She was handing me the ornate satchel.

I took the crocheted case and flipped it open. In there was a paper file, among other things. The manila folder held the information that Canfield had asked for. Christmas had made me Easter’s legal guardian and he had the Riverside Board of Education’s homeschooling certification of her first- and second-grade evaluation exams. She’d had her smallpox, polio, and tetanus vaccines.

I handed the papers over to Mrs. Canfield, and she studied them like a poker player in the biggest game of her life. Three minutes went by while Easter and I sat silently.

“Everything seems to be in order,” the ogre said at last. “I’ll take Miss Black to her classroom.”

“Have Feather walk her home, please,” I said, happy to be mannered and victorious with a single word.