God Help the Child

Brooklyn

Nothing. A call to our CO asking for more extended leave. Rehab. Emotional rehab — whatever. But nothing about where she’s headed or why until today. A note scribbled on a piece of yellow lined tablet paper. Christ. I didn’t have to read it to know what it said. “Sorry I ran away. I had to. Except for you everything was falling apart blah, blah, blah…”

Beautiful dumb bitch. Nothing about where she’s going or how long she’d be gone. One thing I know for sure she’s tracking that guy. I can read her mind like a headline crawling across the bottom of a TV screen. It’s a gift I’ve had since I was a little kid. Like when the landlady stole the money lying on our dining room table and said we were behind in the rent. Or when my uncle started thinking of putting his fingers between my legs again, even before he knew himself what he was planning to do. I hid or ran or screamed with a fake stomachache so my mother would wake from her drunken nap to tend to me. Believe it. I’ve always sensed what people want and how to please them. Or not. Only once did I misread — with Bride’s loverman.

I ran away, too, Bride, but I was fourteen and there was nobody but me to take care of me so I invented myself, toughened myself. I thought you did too except when it came to boyfriends. I knew right away that the last one — a conman if ever I saw one — would turn you into the scared little girl you used to be. One fight with a crazy felon and you surrendered, stupid enough to quit the best job in the world.

I started out sweeping a hairdresser’s shop then waitressing until I got the drugstore job. Long before Sylvia, Inc., I fought like the devil for each job I ever got and let nothing, nothing stop me.

But for you it’s “Wah, wah, I had to run…” Where to? In some place where there is no real stationery or even a postcard?

Bride, please.

~ ~ ~

A city girl is quickly weary of the cardboard boredom of tiny rural towns. Whatever the weather, iron-bright sunshine or piercing rain, the impression of worn boxes hiding shiftless residents seems to sap the most attentive gaze. It’s one thing for onetime hippies to live their anticapitalist ideals near the edge of a seldom-traveled country road. Evelyn and Steve had lived exciting lives of risk and purpose in their adventurous pasts. But what about regular plain folks who were born in these places and never left? Bride wasn’t feeling superior to the line of tiny, melancholy houses and mobile homes on each side of the road, just puzzled. What would make Booker choose this place? And who the hell is Q. Olive?

She had driven one hundred and seventy miles on and off dirt roads some of which must have been created originally by moccasin-shod feet and wolf packs. Truckers could navigate them but a Jaguar repaired with another model’s door had serious trouble. Bride drove carefully, peering ahead for obstacles, alive or not. By the time she saw the sign nailed to the trunk of a pine tree, her exhaustion quieted a growing alarm. Although there were no more physical disappearances, she was disturbed by the fact that she’d had no menstrual period for at least two, maybe three, months. Flat-chested and without underarm or pubic hair, pierced ears and stable weight, she tried and failed to forget what she believed was her crazed transformation back into a scared little black girl.

Whiskey, it turned out, was half a dozen or so houses on both sides of a gravel road that led to a stretch of trailers and mobile homes. Parallel to the road beyond a stretch of sorrowful-looking trees ran a deep but narrow stream. The houses had no addresses but some mobile homes had names painted on sturdy mailboxes. Under eyes suspicious of strange cars and stranger visitors, Bride cruised slowly until she saw QUEEN OLIVE printed on a mailbox in front of a pale-yellow mobile home. She parked, got out and was walking toward the door when she smelled gasoline and fire that seemed to be coming from behind the home. When she crept toward the backyard she saw a heavyset red-headed woman sprinkling gasoline on a metal bedspring, carefully noting where flames needed to be fed.

Bride hurried back to her car and waited. Two children came along, attracted, perhaps, by the fancy automobile, but distracted by the woman at the wheel. Both stared at her for what seemed like minutes in unblinking wonder. Bride ignored the dumbstruck children. She knew well what it was to walk into a room and see the exchange of looks between white strangers. The looks were dismissible because, most often, the gasps her blackness provoked were invariably followed by the envy her beauty produced. Although, with Jeri’s help, she had capitalized on her dark skin, stressing it, glamorizing it, she recalled an exchange she once had with Booker. Complaining about her mother, she told him that Sweetness hated her for her black skin.

“It’s just a color,” Booker had said. “A genetic trait — not a flaw, not a curse, not a blessing nor a sin.”

“But,” she countered, “other people think racial—”

Booker cut her off. “Scientifically there’s no such thing as race, Bride, so racism without race is a choice. Taught, of course, by those who need it, but still a choice. Folks who practice it would be nothing without it.”

His words were rational and, at the time, soothing but had little to do with day-to-day experience — like sitting in a car under the stunned gaze of little white children who couldn’t be more fascinated if they were at a museum of dinosaurs. Nevertheless, she flat out refused to be derailed from her mission simply because she was outside the comfort zone of paved streets, tight lawns surrounded by racially diverse people who might not help but would not harm her. Determined to discover what she was made of — cotton or steel — there could be no retreat, no turning back.

Half an hour passed; the children were gone and a nickel-plated sun at the top of the sky warmed the car’s interior. Taking a deep breath, Bride walked to the yellow door and knocked. When the female arsonist appeared she said, “Hello. Excuse me. I’m looking for Booker Starbern. This is the address I have for him.”

“That figures,” said the woman. “I get a lot of his mail — magazines, catalogs, stuff he writes himself.”

“Is he here?” Bride was dazzled by the woman’s earrings, golden discs the size of clamshells.

“Uh-uh.” The woman shook her head while boring into Bride’s eyes. “He’s nearby, though.”

“He is? Well how far is nearby?” Relieved that Q. Olive was not a young rival, Bride sighed and asked directions.

“You can walk it, but come on in. Booker ain’t going nowhere. He’s laid up — broke his arm. Come on in. You look like something a raccoon found and refused to eat.”

Bride swallowed. For the past three years she’d only been told how exotic, how gorgeous she was — everywhere, from almost everybody — stunning, dreamy, hot, wow! Now this old woman with woolly red hair and judging eyes had deleted an entire vocabulary of compliments in one stroke. Once again she was the ugly, too-black little girl in her mother’s house.

Queen curled her finger. “Get in here, girl. You need feeding.”

“Look, Miss Olive—”

“Just Queen, honey. And it’s Ol-li-vay. Step on in here. I don’t get much company and I know hungry when I see it.”

Well, that’s true, thought Bride. Her anxiety during the long trip had masked her stomach-yelling hunger. She obeyed Queen and was pleasantly surprised at the room’s orderliness, comfort and charm. She had wondered for a second if she was being seduced into a witch’s den. Obviously Queen sewed, knitted, crocheted and made lace. Curtains, slipcovers, cushions, embroidered napkins were elegantly handmade. A quilt on the headboard of an empty bed, whose springs were apparently cooling outside, was pieced in soft colors and, like everything else, cleverly mismatched. Small antiques such as picture frames and side tables were oddly placed. One whole wall was covered with photographs of children. A pot simmered on the two-burner stove. Queen, unaccustomed to being rebuffed, placed two porcelain bowls on linen mats along with matching napkins and silver soup spoons with filigreed handles.

Bride sat down at a narrow table on a chair with a decorative seat cushion and watched Queen ladle thick soup into their bowls. Pieces of chicken floated among peas, potatoes, corn kernels, tomato, celery, green peppers, spinach and a scattering of pasta shells. Bride couldn’t identify the strong seasonings — curry? Cardamom? Garlic? Cayenne? Black pepper and red? But the result was manna. Queen added a basket of warm flat bread, joined her guest and blessed the food. Neither spoke for long minutes of eating. Finally, Bride looked up from her bowl, wiped her lips, sighed and asked her hostess, “Why were you burning your bedsprings? I saw you back there.”

“Bedbugs,” answered Queen. “Every year I burn them out before the eggs get started.”

“Oh. I never heard of that.” Then, feeling more comfortable with the woman, asked, “What kind of stuff did Booker send you? You said he sent some writings.”

“Uh-huh. He did. Every now and then.”

“What were they about?”

“Beats me. I’ll show you some, if you like. Say, why you looking for Booker? He owe you money? You sure can’t be his woman. You sound like you don’t know him too good.”

“I don’t, but I thought I did.” She didn’t say so, but it suddenly occurred to her that good sex was not knowledge. It was barely information.

Bride touched the napkin to her lips again. “We were living together, then he dumped me. Just like that.” Bride snapped her fingers. “He left me without a word.”

Queen chuckled. “Oh he’s a leaver, all right. Left his own family. All except me.”

“He did? Why?” Bride didn’t like being classified with Booker’s family, but the news surprised her.

“His older brother was murdered when they was kids and he didn’t approve of his folks’ response.”

“Awww,” Bride murmured. “That’s sad.” She made the acceptable sound of sympathy but was shocked to learn she knew nothing about it.

“More than sad. Almost ruined the family.”

“What did they do that made him leave?”

“They moved on. Started to live life like it was life. He wanted them to establish a memorial, a foundation or something in his brother’s name. They weren’t interested. At all. I have to take some responsibility for the breakup. I told him to keep his brother close, mourn him as long as he needed to. I didn’t count on what he took away from what I said. Anyhow, Adam’s death became his own life. I think it’s his only life.” Queen glanced at Bride’s empty bowl. “More?”

“No thanks, but it was delicious. I don’t remember eating anything that good.”

Queen smiled. “It’s my United Nations recipe from the food of all my husbands’ hometowns. Seven, from Delhi to Dakar, from Texas to Australia, and a few in between.” She was laughing, her shoulders rocking. “So many men and all of them the same where it counts.”

“Where does it count?”

“Ownership.”

All those husbands and still all alone, thought Bride. “Don’t you have any kids?” Obviously she did; their photographs were everywhere.

“Lots. Two live with their fathers and their new wives; two in the military — one a marine, one in the air force; another one, my last, a daughter, is in medical school. She’s my dream child. The next to last is filthy rich somewhere in New York City. Most of them send me money so they don’t have to come see me. But I see them.” She waved to the photographs gazing out from exquisite frames. “And I know how and what they think. Booker always stayed in touch with me, though. Here, I’ll show you how and what he thinks.” Queen moved to a cabinet where sewing materials were neatly hanging or stacked. From its floor she lifted an old-fashioned breadbox. After sorting through its contents, she removed a thin sheaf of papers clipped together and handed it to her guest.

What lovely handwriting, thought Bride, suddenly realizing that she’d never seen anything Booker wrote — not even his name. There were seven sheets. One for each month they were together — plus one more. She read the first page slowly, her forefinger tracing the lines, for there was little or no punctuation.

Hey girl what’s inside your curly head besides dark rooms with dark men dancing too close to comfort the mouth hungry for more of what it is sure is there somewhere out there just waiting for a tongue and some breath to stroke teeth that bite the night and swallow whole the world denied you so get rid of those smokey dreams and lie on the beach in my arms while i cover you with white sands from shores you have never seen lapped by waters so crystal and blue they make you shed tears of bliss and let you know that you do belong finally to the planet you were born on and can now join the out-there world in the deep peace of a cello.

Bride read the words twice, understanding little if anything. It was the second page that made her uncomfortable.

Her imagination is impeccable the way it cuts and scrapes the bone never touching the marrow where that dirty feeling is thrumming like a fiddle for fear its strings will break and screech the loss of its tune since for her permanent ignorance is so much better than the quick of life.

Queen, having finished washing the dishes, offered her guest a drink of whiskey. Bride declined.

Reading the third page, she thought she remembered a conversation she’d had with Booker that could have provoked what he wrote, the one in which she described the landlord and details of her childhood.

You accepted like a beast of burden the whip of a stranger’s curse and the mindless menace it holds along with the scar it leaves as a definition you spend your life refuting although that hateful word is only a slim line drawn on a shore and quickly dissolved in a seaworld any moment when an equally mindless wave fondles it like the accidental touch of a finger on a clarinet stop that the musician converts into silence in order to let the true note ring out loud.

Bride read three more pages in quick succession.

Trying to understand racist malignancy only feeds it, makes it balloon-fat and lofty floating high overhead fearful of sinking to earth where a blade of grass could puncture it letting its watery feces soil the enthralled audience the way mold ruins piano keys both black and white, sharp and flat to produce a dirge of its decay.

I refuse to be ashamed of my shame, you know, the one assigned to me which matches the low priority and the degraded morality of those who insist upon this most facile of human feelings of inferiority and flaw simply to disguise their own cowardice by pretending it is identical to a banjo’s purity.

Thank you. You showed me rage and frailty and hostile recklessness and worry worry worry dappled with such uncompromising shards of light and love it seemed a kindness in order to be able to leave you and not fold into a grief so deep it would break not the heart but the mind that knows the oboe’s shriek and the way it tears into rags of silence to expose your beauty too dazzling to contain and which turns its melody into the grace of livable space.

Puzzled, Bride raised her eyes from the pages and looked at Queen, who said, “Interesting, is it?”

“Very,” answered Bride. “But strange too. I wonder who he was talking to.”

“Himself,” said Queen. “I bet they’re all about him. Don’t you think so?”

“No,” murmured Bride. “These are about me, our time together.” Then she read the last page.

You should take heartbreak of whatever kind seriously with the courage to let it blaze and burn like the pulsing star it is unable or unwilling to be soothed into pathetic self-blame because its explosive brilliance rings justifiably loud like the din of a tympani.

Bride put the papers down and covered her eyes.

“Go see him,” said Queen, her voice low. “He’s down the road, the last house beside the stream. Come on, get up, wash your face and go.”

“I’m not sure I should, now.” Bride shook her head. She had counted on her looks for so long — how well beauty worked. She had not known its shallowness or her own cowardice — the vital lesson Sweetness taught and nailed to her spine to curve it.

“What’s the matter with you?” Queen sounded annoyed. “You come all this way and just turn around and leave?” Then she started singing, imitating the voice of a baby:

Don’t know why

There’s no sun up in the sky…

Can’t go on.

Everything I had is gone,

Stormy weather…

“Damn!” Bride slapped the table. “You’re absolutely right! Totally right! This is about me, not him. Me!”

—

“You? Get out!” Booker rose from his narrow bed and pointed at Bride, who was standing in the door of his trailer.

“Fuck you! I’m not leaving here until you—”

“I said get out! Now!” Booker’s eyes were both dead and alive with hatred. His uncast arm pointed toward the door. Bride ran nine quick steps forward and slapped Booker’s face as hard as she could. He hit her back with just enough force to knock her down. Scrambling up, she grabbed a Michelob bottle from a counter and broke it over his head. Booker fell back on his bed, motionless. Tightening her fist on the neck of the broken bottle, Bride stared at the blood seeping into his left ear. A few seconds later he regained consciousness, leaned on his elbow and, with squinty, unfocused eyes, turned to look at her.

“You walked out on me,” she screamed. “Without a word! Nothing! Now I want that word. Whatever it is I want to hear it. Now!”

Booker, wiping blood from the left side of his face with his right hand, snarled, “I don’t have to tell you shit.”

“Oh, yes you do.” She raised the broken bottle.

“You get out of my house before something bad happens.”

“Shut up and answer me!”

“Jesus, woman.”

“Why? I have to know, Booker.”

“First tell me why you bought presents for a child molester — in prison for it, for Christ’s sake. Tell me why you sucked up to a monster.”

“I lied! I lied! I lied! She was innocent. I helped convict her but she didn’t do any of that. I wanted to make amends but she beat the crap out of me and I deserved it.”

The room temperature had not risen, but Bride was sweating, her forehead, upper lip, even her armpits were soaking.

“You lied? What the hell for?”

“So my mother would hold my hand!”

“What?”

“And look at me with proud eyes, for once.”

“So, did she?”

“Yes. She even liked me.”

“So you mean to tell me—”

“Shut up and talk! Why did you walk out on me?”

“Oh, God.” Booker wiped more blood from the side of his face. “Look. Well, see. My brother, he was murdered by a freak, a predator like the one I thought you were forgiving and—”

“I don’t care! I didn’t do it! It wasn’t me who killed your brother.”

“All right! All right! I get that, but—”

“But nothing! I was trying to make up to someone I ruined. You just ran around blaming everybody. You bastard. Here, wipe your bloody hand.” Bride threw a dish towel toward him and put down what was left of the bottle. After wiping her palms on her jeans and brushing hair from her damp forehead, she looked steadily at Booker. “You don’t have to love me but you damn well have to respect me.” She sat down in a chair by the table and crossed her legs.

In a long silence cut only by the sound of their breathing, they stared not at each other but away — at the floor, their hands, through the window. Minutes passed.

At last Booker felt he had something definitive and vital to say, to explain, but when he opened his mouth his tongue froze — the words were not there. No matter. Bride was asleep in the chair, her chin pointing toward her chest, her long legs splayed.

—

Queen didn’t knock; she simply opened the door to Booker’s trailer and stepped in. When she saw Bride sprawled asleep in a chair and the bruise over Booker’s eye she said, “Good Lord. What happened?”

“Dustup,” said Booker.

“Is she okay?”

“Yeah. Knocked herself out and fell asleep.”

“Some ‘dustup.’ She came all this way to beat you up? For what? Love or misery?”

“Both, probably.”

“Well, let’s get her out of that chair and on the bed,” said Queen.

“Right.” Booker stood up. With Queen’s help and his one working arm they got her on his narrow, unmade bed. Bride moaned, but did not wake.

Queen sat down at the table. “What you gonna do about her?”

“I don’t know,” answered Booker. “It was perfect for a while, the two of us.”

“What caused the split?”

“Lies. Silence. Just not saying what was true or why.”

“About?”

“About us as kids, things that happened, why we did things, thought things, took actions that were really about what went on when we were just children.”

“Adam for you?”

“Adam for me.”

“And for her?”

“A big lie she told when she was a kid that helped put an innocent woman in prison. A long sentence for child rape the woman never did. I walked out after we quarreled about Bride’s strange affection for the woman. At least it seemed strange at the time. I didn’t want to be anywhere near her after that.”

“What’d she lie for?”

“To get some love — from her mama.”

“Lord! What a mess. And you thought about Adam — again. Always Adam.”

“Yep.”

Queen crossed her wrists and leaned on the table. “How long is he going to run you?”

“I can’t help it, Queen.”

“No? She told her truth. What’s yours?”

Booker didn’t answer. The two of them sat in silence with Bride’s light snoring the only sound until Queen said, “You need a noble reason to fail, don’t you? Or some really deep reason to feel superior.”

“Aw, no, Queen. I’m not like that! Not at all.”

“Well what? You lash Adam to your shoulders so he can work day and night to fill your brain. Don’t you think he’s tired? He must be worn out having to die and get no rest because he has to run somebody else’s life.”

“Adam’s not managing me.”

“No. You managing him. Did you ever feel free of him? Ever?”

“Well.” Booker flashed back to standing in the rain, how his music changed right after he saw Bride stepping into a limousine, how the gloom he had been living in dissipated. He thought about his arms around her waist while they danced and her smile when she turned around. “Well,” he repeated, “for a while it was good, really good being with her.” He couldn’t hide the pleasure in his eyes.

“I guess good isn’t good enough for you, so you called Adam back and made his murder turn your brain into a cadaver and your heart’s blood formaldehyde.”

Booker and Queen stared at each other for a long time until she stood up and, not taking the trouble to hide her disappointment, said, “Fool,” and left him slouched in his chair.

—

Taking her time Queen walked slowly back to her house. Amusement and sadness competed for her attention. She was amused because she hadn’t seen lovers fight in decades — not since she lived in the projects in Cleveland where young couples acted out their violent emotions as theatrical performances, aware of a visible or invisible audience. She had experienced it all with multiple husbands, all of whom were now blended into no one. Except her first, John Loveday, whom she’d divorced — or had she? Hard to remember since she hadn’t divorced the next one either. Queen smiled at the selective memory old age blessed her with. But sadness cut through the smile. The anger, the violence on display between Bride and Booker, were unmistakable and typical of the young. Yet, after they hauled the sleeping girl to the bed and laid her down, Queen saw Booker smooth the havoc of Bride’s hair away from her forehead. Glancing quickly at his face she was struck by the tenderness in his eyes.

They will blow it, she thought. Each will cling to a sad little story of hurt and sorrow — some long-ago trouble and pain life dumped on their pure and innocent selves. And each one will rewrite that story forever, knowing the plot, guessing the theme, inventing its meaning and dismissing its origin. What waste. She knew from personal experience how hard loving was, how selfish and how easily sundered. Withholding sex or relying on it, ignoring children or devouring them, rerouting true feelings or locking them out. Youth being the excuse for that fortune-cookie love — until it wasn’t, until it became pure adult stupidity.

I was pretty once, she thought, real pretty, and I believed it was enough. Well, actually it was until it wasn’t, until I had to be a real person, meaning a thinking one. Smart enough to know heavyweight was a condition not a disease; smart enough now to read the minds of selfish people right away. But the smarts came too late for her children.

Each of her “husbands” snatched a child or two from her, claimed them or absconded with them. Some spirited them away to their home countries; another had his mistress capture two; all but one of her husbands — the sweet Johnny Loveday — had good reasons to pretend love: American citizenship, U.S. passport, financial help, nursing care or a temporary home. She had no opportunity to raise a single child beyond the age of twelve. It took some time to figure out the motives for faking love — hers and theirs. Survival, she supposed, literal and emotional. Queen had been through it all, and now she lived alone in the wilderness, knitting and tatting away, grateful that, at last, Sweet Jesus had given her a forgetfulness blanket along with a little pillow of wisdom to comfort her in old age.

—

Restless and deeply displeased with the turn of events, especially Queen’s open disgust with him, Booker went outside and sat on his doorstep. Soon it would be twilight and this haphazard village minus streetlights would disappear in darkness. Music from a few radios would be as distant as the lights flickering from TV sets: old Zeniths and Pioneers. He watched a couple of local trucks rumble by and a few motorcyclists that followed soon after. The truckers wore caps; the motorcyclists wore scarves tied around their foreheads. Booker liked the mild anarchy of the place, its indifference to its residents modified by the presence of his aunt, the single person he trusted. He’d found some on-and-off work with loggers, which was enough until he fell out of a rig and wrecked his shoulder. At every turn, cutting into his aimless thoughts was the picture of the spellbinding black woman lying in his bed, exhausted after screaming and trying her best to kill him or at minimum beat him up. He really didn’t know what made her drive all this way except vengeance or outrage — or was it love?

Queen’s right, he thought. Except for Adam I don’t know anything about love. Adam had no faults, was innocent, pure, easy to love. Had he lived, grown up to have flaws, human failings like deception, foolishness and ignorance, would he be so easy to adore or be even worthy of adoration? What kind of love is it that requires an angel and only an angel for its commitment?

Following that line of thought, Booker continued to chastise himself.

Bride probably knows more about love than I do. At least she’s willing to figure it out, do something, risk something and take its measure. I risk nothing. I sit on a throne and identify signs of imperfection in others. I’ve been charmed by my own intelligence and the moral positions I’ve taken, along with the insolence that accompanies them. But where is the brilliant research, the enlightening books, the masterpieces I used to dream of producing? Nowhere. Instead I write notes about the shortcomings of others. Easy. So easy. What about my own? I liked how she looked, fucked, and made no demands. The first major disagreement we had, and I was gone. My only judge being Adam who, as Queen said, is probably weary of being my burden and my cross.

He tiptoed back into his trailer and, listening to Bride’s light snoring, retrieved a notebook to once again put on paper words he could not speak.

I don’t miss you anymore adam rather i miss the emotion that your dying produced a feeling so strong it defined me while it erased you leaving only your absence for me to live in like the silence of the japanese gong that is more thrilling than whatever sound may follow.

I apologize for enslaving you in order to chain myself to the illusion of control and the cheap seduction of power. No slaveowner could have done it better.

Booker put away his notebook. Dusk enveloped him and he let the warm air calm him while he looked forward to the dawn.

—

Bride woke in sunshine from a dreamless sleep — deeper than drunkenness, deeper than any she had known. Now having slept so many hours she felt more than rested and free of tension; she felt strong. She didn’t get up right away; instead she remained in Booker’s bed, eyes closed, enjoying a fresh vitality and blazing clarity. Having confessed Lula Ann’s sins she felt newly born. No longer forced to relive, no, outlive the disdain of her mother and the abandonment of her father. Pulling herself away from reverie she sat up and saw Booker drinking coffee at the pull-down table. He looked pensive rather than hostile. So she joined him, picked a strip of bacon from his plate and ate it. Then she bit into his toast.

“Want more?” Booker asked.

“No. No thanks.”

“Coffee? Juice?”

“Well, coffee, maybe.”

“Sure.”

Bride rubbed her eyelids trying to replay the moments before she fell asleep. The swelling over Booker’s left temple helped. “You got me over to your bed with one working arm?”

“I had help,” said Booker.

“Who from?”

“Queen.”

“God. She must think I’m crazy.”

“Doubt it.” Booker placed a cup of coffee in front of her. “She’s an original. Doesn’t recognize crazy.”

Bride blew away the coffee’s steam. “She showed me the things you mailed her. Pages of your writing. Why did you send them to her?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I liked them too much to trash but not enough to carry around. I suppose I wanted them to be in a safe place. Queen keeps everything.”

“When I read them I knew they were all about me — right?”

“Oh, yeah.” Booker rolled his eyes and heaved a theatrical sigh. “Everything is about you except the whole world and the universe it floats in.”

“Would you stop making fun of me? You know what I mean. You wrote them when we were together, right?”

“They’re just thoughts, Bride. Thoughts about what I was feeling or feared or, most often, what I truly believed — at the time.”

“You still believe heartbreak should burn like a star?”

“I do. But stars can explode, disappear. Besides, what we see when we look at them may no longer be there. Some could have died thousands of years ago and we’re just now getting their light. Old information looking like news. Speaking of information, how did you find out where I was?”

“A letter came for you. An overdue bill, I mean, from a music repair shop. The Pawn Palace. So I went there.”

“Why?”

“To pay them, idiot. They told me where you might be. This dump of a place, and they had a forwarding address to a Q. Olive.”

“You paid my bill then drove all this way to slap my face?”

“Maybe. I didn’t plan it, but I have to say it did feel good. Anyway I brought you your horn. Is there more coffee?”

“You got it? My trumpet?”

“Of course. It’s fixed too.”

“Where is it? At Queen’s?”

“In the trunk of my car.”

Booker’s smile traveled from his lips to his eyes. The joy in his face was infantile. “I love you! Love you!” he shouted and ran out the door down the road toward the Jaguar.

—

It began slowly, gently, as it often does: shy, unsure of how to proceed, fingering its way, slithering tentatively at first because who knows how it might turn out, then gaining confidence in the ecstasy of air, of sunlight, for there was neither in the weeds where it had curled.

It had been lurking in the yard where Queen Olive had burned bedsprings to destroy the annual nest of bedbugs. Now it traveled quickly, flashing now and then a thin red lick of flame, then dying down for seconds before springing up again stronger, thicker, now that the way and the goal were clear: a tasty length of pine rotting at the trailer’s pair of back steps. Then the door, more pine, sweet, soft. Finally there was the joy of sucking delicious embroidered fabric of lace, of silk, of velvet.

By the time Bride and Booker got there, a small cluster of people were standing in front of Queen’s house — the jobless, several children and the elderly. Smoke was sneaking from the sills and the door saddle when they broke in. First Booker, then Bride right behind him. They dropped to the floor where smoke was thinnest and crawled to the couch where Queen lay still, seduced into unconsciousness by the smiles of smoke without heat. With his one good arm and Bride’s two, their eyes watering and throats coughing, they managed to pull the unconscious woman to the floor and drag her out to the tiny front lawn.

“Further! Come on, further!” shouted one of the men standing there. “The whole place could blow!”

Booker was too intent on forcing air into Queen’s mouth to hear him. At last in the distance the sirens of fire truck and ambulance excited the children almost as much as the cartoon beauty of a roaring fire. Suddenly, a spark hiding in Queen’s hair burst into flame, devouring the mass of red hair in a blink — just enough time for Bride to pull off her T-shirt and use it to smother the hair fire. When, with stinging, singed palms, she tore away the now sooty, smoking shirt, she grimaced at the sight of a few tufts of hair hard to distinguish from the fast-blistering scalp. All the while, Booker was whispering, “Yeah, yeah. Come on, love, come on, come on, lady.” Queen was breathing — at least coughing and spitting, major signs of life. As the ambulance parked, the crowd became bigger and some of the onlookers seemed transfixed — but not at the moaning patient being trundled into the ambulance. They were focused, wide-eyed, on Bride’s lovely, plump breasts. However pleased the onlookers were, it was zero compared to Bride’s delight. So much so she delayed accepting the blanket the medical technician held toward her — until she saw the look on Booker’s face. But it was hard to suppress her glee, even though she was slightly ashamed at dividing her attention between the sad sight of Queen’s slide into the back of the ambulance and the magical return of her flawless breasts.

Bride and Booker ran to the Jaguar and followed the ambulance.

Once Queen was admitted, Bride spent the days with her, Booker the nights, three of which passed before Queen opened her eyes. Head bandaged, its contents drugged, she recognized neither of her rescuers. All they were able to do was watch the tubes attached to the patient, one clear as glass turning like a rainforest vine, others thin as telephone wire, all secondary to the white clematis bloom covering the soft gurgle from her lips.

Lines of primary colors bled across the screen above the hospital bed. Transparent bags of what looked like flat Champagne dripped into a vine feeding Queen’s flaccid arm. Unable to rise to a bedpan, she had to be scoured, oiled and rewrapped — all of which Bride, not trusting the indifferent hands of the nurse, did herself as tenderly as possible. And she bathed her one section at a time, making sure the lady’s body was covered in certain areas before and after cleansing. She left Queen’s feet untouched because in the evening when Booker relieved her he insisted, like a daily communicant at Easter, on the duty of assuming that act of devotion. He maintained the pedicure, soaped then rinsed Queen’s feet, finally massaging them slowly, rhythmically, with a lotion that smelled like heather. He did the same for Queen’s hands, all the time cursing himself for the animosity he had felt during their last conversation.

Neither one spoke during those ablutions and, except for Bride’s occasional humming, the quiet served as the balm they both needed. They worked together like a true couple, thinking not of themselves, but of helping somebody else. Sitting among other people in a hospital waiting room with nothing to do but worry was an ordeal. But so was staring helplessly at the patient noting every stir, breath or shift of the prone body. After three days of waiting broken by what acts of comfort they could provide, Queen spoke, her voice a rough, unintelligible croak through the oxygen mask. Then late one evening the oxygen mask was removed and Queen whispered, “Am I going to be all right?”

Booker smiled.

“No question. No question at all.” He leaned in and kissed her nose.

Queen licked her dry lips, closed her eyes again and began to snore.

When Bride returned to relieve him and he told her what had happened, they celebrated by eating breakfast together in the hospital cafeteria. Bride ordered cereal, Booker orange juice.

“What about your job?” Booker raised his eyebrows.

“What about it?”

“Just asking, Bride. Breakfast conversation, you know?”

“I don’t know about my job and don’t care. I’ll get another one.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. And you? Logging forever?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Loggers move on after they destroy a forest.”

“Well, don’t worry about me.”

“But I do.”

“Since when?”

“Since you broke a beer bottle over my head.”

“Sorry.”

“No kidding. Me too.”

They chuckled.

Away from Queen’s hospital bed, relieved about her progress and in a fairly relaxed mood, they amused themselves with banter like an old couple.

Suddenly, as though he’d forgotten something, Booker snapped his fingers. Then he reached into his shirt pocket and took out Queen’s gold earrings. They had been removed to bandage Queen’s head. All this time they had been in a little plastic bag tucked in the drawer of her bedside table.

“Take these,” he said. “She prized them and would want you to wear them while she recovers.”

Bride touched her earlobes, felt the return of tiny holes and teared up while grinning.

“Let me,” said Booker. Carefully he inserted the wires into Bride’s lobes, saying, “Good thing she was wearing them when the place caught fire because nothing at all is left. No letters, address book, nothing. All burned. So I called my mother and asked her to get in touch with Queen’s kids.”

“Can she contact them?” asked Bride swerving her head gently back and forth the better to relish the gold discs. Everything was coming back. Almost everything. Almost.

“Some,” Booker replied. “A daughter in Texas, medical student. She’ll be easy to find.”

Bride stirred her oatmeal, tasted a spoonful, found it cold. “She told me she doesn’t see any of them, but they send her money.”

“They all hate her for some reason or another. I know she abandoned some of them to marry other men. Lots of other men. And she didn’t or couldn’t take the kids with her. Their fathers made sure of that.”

“I think she loves them though,” said Bride. “Their photographs were all over the place.”

“Yeah, well the motherfucker who murdered my brother had all his victims’ photos in his fucking den.”

“Not the same, Booker.”

“No?” He looked out the window.

“No. Queen loves her children.”

“They don’t think so.”

“Oh, stop it,” said Bride. “No more stupid arguments about who loves who.” She pushed the cereal bowl to the center of the table and took a sip of his orange juice. “Come on, hateful. Let’s go back and see how she’s doing.”

Standing on either side of Queen’s bed, they were extremely happy to hear her speaking loudly and clearly.

“Hannah? Hannah?” Queen was staring at Bride and breathing hard. “Come here, baby. Hannah?”

“Who’s Hannah?” asked Bride.

“Her daughter. The medical student.”

“She thinks I’m her daughter? God. Drugs, medicine, I guess. That stuff confuses her.”

“Or focuses her,” said Booker. He lowered his voice. “There was a thing with Hannah. Rumor in the family was that Queen ignored or dismissed the girl’s complaint about her father — the Asian one, I believe, or the Texan. I don’t know. Anyway she said he fondled her and Queen refused to believe it. The ice between them never melted.”

“It’s still on her mind.”

“Deeper than her mind.” Booker sat in a chair near the foot of Queen’s bed listening to her persistent call — a whisper now — for Hannah. “Now I think of it, it explains why she told me to hang on to Adam, to keep him close.”

“But Hannah isn’t dead.”

“In a way she is, at least to her mother. You saw that photo display she had on her wall. Takes up all the space. It’s like a roll call. Most of the pictures are of Hannah though — as a baby, a teenager, a high school graduate, winning some prize. More like a memorial than a gallery.”

Bride moved behind Booker’s chair and began to massage his shoulders. “I thought those photos were of all her children,” she said.

“Yeah, some are. But Hannah reigns.” He rested his head on Bride’s stomach and let the tension he didn’t know was in him drift away.

Following a few days of cheer-inspiring recovery, Queen was still confused but talking and eating. Her speech was hard to follow since it seemed to consist of geography — the places she had lived in — and anecdotes addressed to Hannah.

Bride and Booker were pleased with the doctor’s assessment: “She’s doing much better. Much.” They relaxed and began to plan what to do when Queen was released. Get a place where all three were together? A big mobile home? At least until Queen could take care of herself, without delving too closely, they assumed the three of them would live together.

Slowly, slowly their bright plans for the immediate future darkened. The carnival-colored lines on the screen began to wiggle and fall, their sliding punctuated by the music of emergency bells. Booker and Bride took shallow breaths as Queen’s blood count dropped and her temperature rose. A vicious hospital-borne virus, as sneaky and evil as the flame that had destroyed her home, was attacking the patient. She thrashed a bit then held her arms raised high, her fingers clawing, reaching over and over for the rungs of a ladder that only she could see. Then all of it stopped.

Twelve hours later Queen was dead. One eye was still open, so Bride doubted the fact. It was Booker who closed it, after which he closed his own.

—

During the three days waiting until Queen’s ashes were ready, they argued over the choice of an urn. Bride wanted something elegant in brass; Booker preferred something environmentally friendly that could be buried and in time enrich the soil. When they discovered there was no graveyard within thirty-five miles, or a suitable place in the trailer park for her burial, they settled for a cardboard box to hold ashes that would be strewn into the stream. Booker insisted on performing the rites alone while Bride waited in the car. She watched him carefully, anxiously, as he walked away toward the river, holding the carton of ashes in his right elbow and his trumpet dangling from the fingers of his left. These last days, thought Bride, while they were figuring out what to do, were congenial because their focus was on a third person they both loved. What would happen now, she wondered, when or if there was just the two of them again? She didn’t want to be without him, ever, but if she had to she was certain it would be okay. The future? She would handle it.

Although heartfelt, Booker’s ceremony to honor his beloved Queen was awkward: the ashes were lumpy and difficult to toss and his musical tribute, his effort at “Kind of Blue,” was off-key and uninspired. He cut it short and, with a sadness he had not felt since Adam’s death, threw his trumpet into the gray water as though the trumpet had failed him rather than he had failed it. He watched the horn float for a while then sat down on the grass, resting his forehead in his palm. His thoughts were stark, skeletal. It never occurred to him that Queen would die or even could die. Much of the time, while he tended her feet and listened to her breath he was thinking about his own unease. How disrupted his life had become, what with caring for an aunt he adored and who was now dead due to her own carelessness — who the hell burns bedsprings these days? How acute his predicament had become by the sudden return of a woman he once enjoyed, who had changed from one dimension into three — demanding, perceptive, daring. And what made him think he was a talented trumpet player who could do justice to a burial or that music could be his language of memory, of celebration or the displacement of loss? How long had childhood trauma hurtled him away from the rip and wave of life? His eyes burned but were incapable of weeping.

Queen’s remains, touched by a rare welcome breeze, drifted farther and farther down-current. The sky, too sullen to keep its promise of sunlight, sent hot moisture instead. Feeling unbearable loneliness as well as profound regret, Booker stood up and joined Bride in the Jaguar.

—

Inside the car the quiet was thick, brutal, probably because there were no tears and nothing important to say. Except for one thing and one thing only.

Bride took a deep breath before breaking into the deathly silence. Now or never, she thought.

“I’m pregnant,” she said in a clear, calm voice. She looked straight ahead at the well-traveled road of dirt and gravel.

“What did you say?” Booker’s voice cracked.

“You heard me. I’m pregnant and it’s yours.”

Booker gazed at her a long time before looking away toward the river where a smattering of Queen’s ashes still floated but the trumpet had disappeared. One by fire, one by water, two of what he had so intensely loved gone, he thought. He couldn’t lose a third. With just a hint of a smile he turned around to look again at Bride.

“No,” he said. “It’s ours.”

Then he offered her the hand she had craved all her life, the hand that did not need a lie to deserve it, the hand of trust and caring for — a combination that some call natural love. Bride stroked Booker’s palm then threaded her fingers through his. They kissed, lightly, before leaning back on the headrests to let their spines sink into the seats’ soft hide of cattle. Staring through the windshield, each of them began to imagine what the future would certainly be.

No lonesome wandering child with a fishing pole passed by and glanced at the adults in the dusty gray car. But if one had, he or she might have noticed the pronounced smiles of the couple, how dreamy their eyes were, but would not care a bit what caused that shine of happiness.

A child. New life. Immune to evil or illness, protected from kidnap, beatings, rape, racism, insult, hurt, self-loathing, abandonment. Error-free. All goodness. Minus wrath.

So they believe.

Sweetness

I prefer this place — Winston House — to those big, expensive nursing homes outside the city. Mine is small, homey, cheaper, with twenty-four-hour nurses and a doctor who comes twice a week. I’m only sixty-three — too young for pasture — but I came down with some creeping bone disease, so good care is vital. The boredom is worse than the weakness or the pain, but the nurses are lovely. One just kissed me on the cheek before congratulating me when I told her I was going to be a grandmother. Her smile and her compliments were fit for someone about to be crowned.

I had showed her the note on blue paper that I got from Lula Ann — well, she signed it “Bride,” but I never pay that any attention. Her words sounded giddy. “Guess what, S. I am so so happy to pass along this news. I am going to have a baby. I’m too too thrilled and hope you are too.” I reckon the thrill is about the baby, not its father, because she doesn’t mention him at all. I wonder if he is as black as she is. If so, she needn’t worry like I did. Things have changed a mite from when I was young. Blue blacks are all over TV, in fashion magazines, commercials, even starring in movies.

There is no return address on the envelope. So I guess I’m still the bad parent being punished forever till the day I die for doing the well-intended and, in fact, necessary way I brought her up. I know she hates me. As soon as she could she left me all alone in that awful apartment. She got as far away from me as she could: dolled herself up and got some big-time job in California. The last time I saw her she looked so good, I forgot about her color. Still, our relationship is down to her sending me money. I have to say I’m grateful for the cash because I don’t have to beg for extras like some of the other patients. If I want my own fresh deck of cards for solitaire I can get it and not need to play with the dirty, worn one in the lounge. And I can buy my special face cream. But I’m not fooled. I know the money she sends is a way to stay away and quiet down the little bit of conscience she’s got left.

If I sound irritable, ungrateful, part of it is because underneath is regret. All the little things I didn’t do or did wrong. I remember when she had her first period and how I reacted. Or the times I shouted when she stumbled or dropped something. How I screamed at her to keep her from tattling on the landlord — the dog. True. I was really upset, even repelled by her black skin when she was born and at first I thought of…No. I have to push those memories away — fast. No point. I know I did the best for her under the circumstances. When my husband ran out on us, Lula Ann was a burden. A heavy one but I bore it well.

Yes, I was tough on her. You bet I was. After she got all that attention following the trial of those teachers, she became hard to handle. By the time she turned twelve going on thirteen I had to be even tougher. She was talking back, refusing to eat what I cooked, primping her hair. When I braided it, she’d go to school and unbraid it. I couldn’t let her go bad. I slammed the lid and warned her of the names she’d be called. Still, some of my schooling must have rubbed off. See how she turned out? A rich career girl. Can you beat it?

Now she’s pregnant. Good move, Lula Ann. If you think mothering is all cooing, booties and diapers you’re in for a big shock. Big. You and your nameless boyfriend, husband, pickup — whoever — imagine OOOH! A baby! Kitchee kitchee koo!

Listen to me. You are about to find out what it takes, how the world is, how it works and how it changes when you are a parent.

Good luck and God help the child.