Paradise

SAVE-MARIE

"This is why we are here: in this single moment of aching sadness-in contemplating the short life and the unacceptable, incomprehensible death of a child-we confirm, defer or lose our faith. Here in the tick tock of this moment, in this place all our questions, all our fear, our outrage, confusion, desolation seem to merge, snatch away the earth and we feel as though we are falling. Here, we might say, it is time to halt, to linger this one time and reject platitudes about sparrows falling under His eye; about the good dying young (this child didn't have a choice about being good); or about death being the only democracy. This is the time to ask the questions that are really on our minds. Who could do this to a child? Who could permit this for a child? And why?"

Sweetie Fleetwood wouldn't discuss it. Her child would not be laid to rest on Steward Morgan's land. It was a brand-new problem: the subject of burial sites had not come up in Ruby for twenty years, and there was astonishment as well as sadness when the task became necessary.

When Save-Marie, the youngest of Sweetie and Jeff's children, died, people assumed the rest of them, Noah, Esther and Ming, would quickly follow. The first was given a strong name for a strong son as well as being the name of his great-grandfather. The second was named Esther for the great-grandmother who loved and cared for the first so selflessly. The third had a name Jeff insisted upon-something having to do with the war. This last child's name was a request (or a lament): Save-Marie, and who was to say whether the call had not been answered. Thus the tense discussion of a formal cemetery was not only because of Sweetie's wishes and the expectation of more funerals, but out of a sense that, for complicated reasons, the reaper was no longer barred entry from Ruby. Richard Misner was therefore presiding over consecrated ground and launching a new institution. But whether to use the ad hoc cemetery on Steward's ranch-where Ruby Smith lay-was a question out of the question for Sweetie. Under the influence of her brother, Luther, and blaming Steward for the trouble he got her husband and father-in-law into, she said she would rather do what Roger Best had done (dug a grave on his own property), and she couldn't care less that twenty-three years had passed since that quick and poorly attended backyard burial took place. Most people understood why she was making such a fuss (grief plus blame was a heady brew) but Pat Best believed that Sweetie's stubbornness was more calculated. Rejecting a Morgan offer, casting doubt on Morgan righteousness might squeeze some favors from Morgan pockets. And if Pat's 8-rock theory was correct, Sweetie's vindictiveness put the 8-rocks in the awkward position of deciding to have a real and formal cemetery in a town full of immortals. Something seismic had happened since July. So here they were, under a soapy sky on a mild November day, gathered a mile or so beyond the last Ruby house, which was, of course, Morgan land, but nobody had the heart to tell Sweetie so. Standing among the crowd surrounding the bereaved Fleetwoods, Pat regained something close to stability. Earlier, at the funeral service, the absence of a eulogy had made her cry. Now she was her familiar, dispassionately amused self. At least she hoped she was dispassionate, and hoped amusement was what she was feeling. She knew there were other views about her attitude, some of which Richard Misner had expressed ("Sad. Sad and cold"), but she was a scholar, not a romantic, and steeled herself against Misner's graveside words to observe the mourners instead. He and Anna Flood had returned two days after the assault on the Convent women, and it took four days for him to learn what had happened.

Pat gave him the two editions of the official story: One, that nine men had gone to talk to and persuade the Convent women to leave or mend their ways; there had been a fight; the women took other shapes and disappeared into thin air. And two (the Fleetwood-Jury version), that five men had gone to evict the women; that four others-the authors-had gone to restrain or stop them; these four were attacked by the women but had succeeded in driving them out, and they took off in their Cadillac; but unfortunately, some of the five had lost their heads and killed the old woman. Pat left Richard to choose for himself which rendition he preferred. What she withheld from him was her own: that nine 8-rocks murdered five harmless women (a) because the women were impure (not 8-rock); (b) because the women were unholy (fornicators at the least, abortionists at most); and (c) because they could-which was what being an 8-rock meant to them and was also what the "deal" required.

Richard didn't believe either of the stories rapidly becoming gospel, and spoke to Simon Cary and Senior Pulliam, who clarified other parts of the tale. But because neither had decided on the meaning of the ending and, therefore, had not been able to formulate a credible, sermonizable account of it, they could not assuage Richard's dissatisfaction. It was Lone who provided him with the livid details that several people were quick to discredit, because Lone, they said, was not reliable. Except for her, no one overheard the men at the Oven and who knew what they really said? Like the rest of the witnesses she arrived after the shots were fired; besides, she and Dovey could be wrong about whether the two women in the house were dead or just wounded; and finally, she didn't see anybody outside the house, living or dead.

As for Lone, she became unhinged by the way the story was being retold; how people were changing it to make themselves look good.

Other than Deacon Morgan, who had nothing to say, every one of the assaulting men had a different tale and their families and friends (who had been nowhere near the Convent) supported them, enhancing, recasting, inventing misinformation. Although the DuPreses, Beauchamps, Sandses and Pooles backed up her version, even their reputation for precision and integrity could not prevent altered truth from taking hold in other quarters. If there were no victims the story of the crime was play for anybody's tongue. So Lone shut up and kept what she felt certain of folded in her brain: God had given Ruby a second chance. Had made Himself so visible and unarguable a presence that even the outrageously prideful (like Steward) and the uncorrectably stupid (like his lying nephew) ought to be able to see it. He had actually swept up and received His servants in broad daylight, for goodness' sake! right before their very eyes, for Christ's sake! Since they were accusing her of lying, she decided to keep quiet and watch the hand of God work the disbelievers and the false witnesses. Would they know they'd been spoken to? Or would they drift further from His ways? One thing, for sure: they could see the Oven; they couldn't misread or misspeak that, so they had better hurry up and fix its slide before it was too late-which it might already be, for the young people had changed its words again. No longer were they calling themselves Be the Furrow of His Brow. The graffiti on the hood of the Oven now was "We Are the Furrow of His Brow."

However sharp the divisions about what really took place, Pat knew the big and agreed-upon fact was that everyone who had been there left the premises certain that lawmen would be happily swarming all over town (they'd killed a white woman, after all), arresting virtually all of Ruby's businessmen. When they learned there were no dead to report, transport or bury, relief was so great they began to forget what they'd actually done or seen. Had it not been for Luther Beauchamp-who told the most damning story-and Pious, Deed Sands and Aaron-who corroborated much of Lone's version-the whole thing might have been sanitized out of existence. Yet even they could not bring themselves to report unnatural deaths in a house with no bodies, which might lead to the discovery of natural deaths in an automobile full of bodies. Though not privy to many people's confidence, Pat gathered from talks with her father, with Kate and from deliberate eavesdropping that four months later they were still chewing the problem, asking God for guidance if they were wrong: if white law should, contrary to everything they knew and believed, be permitted to deal with matters heretofore handled among and by them. The difficulties churned and entangled everybody: distribution of blame, prayers for understanding and forgiveness, arrogant selfdefense, outright lies, and a host of unanswered questions that Richard Misner kept putting to them. So the funeral came as a pause but not a conclusion.

Maybe they were right about this place all along, Pat thought, surveying the townspeople. Maybe Ruby is lucky. No, she corrected herself. Although the evidence of the assault was invisible, the consequences were not. There was Jeff, his arm around his wife, both looking properly sorrowful but slightly majestic too, for Jeff was now sole owner of his father's furniture and appliance store. Arnold, suddenly a very old man with a persistent headache, and enjoying his own bedroom now that Arnette had moved out, stood with bowed head and roaming eyes that traveled everywhere but near the coffin. Sargeant Person looked as smug as ever: he had no landlord expecting a field fee and unless and until the county auditor got interested in a tiny hamlet of quiet, God-fearing black folk, his avarice would go unabated. Harper Jury, uncontrite, was wearing a dark blue suit and a head wound that, like a medal, gave him leave to assume the position of bloodied but unbowed warrior against evil. Menus was the most unfortunate.

He had no customers at Anna's anymore, in part because his ruined shoulder restricted his facility with barber tools but also because his drinking had extended itself to many more days of the week. His dissipation was rapidly coming to its own conclusion. Wisdom Poole had the toughest row to hoe. Seventy family members held him accountable (just as they had his brothers, Brood and Apollo) for scandalizing their forefathers' reputations, giving him no peace or status, reprimanding him daily until he fell on his knees and wept before the entire congregation of Holy Redeemer. After testifying, recommitted, renewed and full of remorse, he began tentative conversations with Brood and Apollo. Arnette and K. D. were building a new house on Steward's property. She was pregnant again, and they both hoped to get in a position to make life unpleasant for the Pooles, the DuPreses, the Sandses and the Beauchamps, especially Luther, who took every opportunity to insult K. D. The most interesting development was with the Morgan brothers. Their distinguishing features were eroding: tobacco choices (they gave up cigar and chaw at the same time), shoes, clothes, facial hair. Pat thought they looked more alike than they probably had at birth. But the inside difference was too deep for anyone to miss. Steward, insolent and unapologetic, took K. D. under his wing, concentrating on making the nephew and the sixteen-month-old grandnephew rich (thus the new house), easing K. D. into the bank while waiting for Dovey to come around, which she seemed to be doing, because there was an obvious coolness between her and Soane. The sisters disagreed about what happened at the Convent. Dovey saw Consolata fall but maintained she did not see who pulled the trigger. Soane knew, and needed to know, one thing: it had not been her husband. She had seen his hand moving over to Steward's in a cautioning, preventing gesture. She saw it and she said it, over and over again, to anyone who would listen.

It was Deacon Morgan who had changed the most. It was as though he had looked in his brother's face and did not like himself anymore. To everyone's surprise he had formed a friendship (well, a relationship anyway) with somebody other than Steward, the cause, reason and basis of which were a mystery. Richard Misner wasn't talking, so all anyone knew for certain was the barefoot walk that took place in public.

It was September then and still hot when Deacon Morgan walked toward Central. Chrysanthemums to the right, chrysanthemums to the left of the brick path leading from his imposing white house. He wore his hat, business suit, vest and a clean white shirt. No shoes. No socks. He entered St. John Street, where he had planted trees fifty feet apart, so great was his optimism twenty years earlier. He turned right on Central.

It had been at least a decade since the soles of his shoes, let alone his bare feet, had touched that much concrete. Just past Arnold Fleetwood's house, near the corner of St. Luke, a couple said, "Morning, Deek." He lifted his hand in greeting, his eyes straight ahead. Lily Cary helloed from the porch of her house near Cross Mark but he did not turn his head. "Car broke down?" she asked, staring at his feet. At Harper Jury's drugstore, on the corner of Central and St. Matthew, he felt rather than saw watchful eyes traveling alongside him. He didn't turn to see nor did he glance through the window of the Morgan Savings and Loan Bank as he approached St. Peter. At Cross Peter he crossed and made his way to Richard Misner's house. The last time he was here, six years before, he was angry, suspicious but certain he and his brother would prevail. What he felt now was exotic to a twin-an incompleteness, a muffled solitude, which took away appetite, sleep and sound. Since July, other people seemed to him to be speaking in whispers, or shouting from long distances. Soane watched him but, mercifully, did not initiate dangerous dialogue. It was as though she understood that had she done so, what he said to her would draw the life from their life. He might tell her that green springtime had been sapped away; that outside of that loss, she was grand, more beautiful than he believed a woman could be; that her untamable hair framed a face of planes so sharp he wanted to touch; that after she spoke, the smile that followed made the sun look like a fool. He might tell his wife that he thought at first she was speaking to him-"You're back"-but knew now it wasn't so. And that instantly he longed to know what she saw, but Steward, who saw nothing or everything, stopped them dead lest they know another realm.

Earlier that September morning he had bathed and dressed carefully but could not bring himself to cover his feet. He handled the dark socks, the shiny black shoes for a long while, then put them aside. He knocked on the door and removed his hat when the younger man answered.

"I need to speak to you, Reverend."

"Come on in."

Deacon Morgan had never consulted with or taken into his confidence any man. All of his intimate conversations had been wordless ones with his brother or brandishing ones with male companions. He spoke to his wife in the opaque manner he thought appropriate. None had required him to translate into speech the raw matter he exposed to Reverend Misner. His words came out like ingots pulled from the fire by an apprentice blacksmith-hot, misshapen, resembling themselves only in their glow. He spoke of a wall in Ravenna, Italy, white in the late afternoon sun with wine colored shadows pressing its edge. Of two children on a beach offering him a shell formed like an S-how open their faces, how loud the bells. Of salt water burning his face on a troop ship. Of colored girls in slacks waving from the door of a canning factory. Then he told him of his grandfather who walked barefoot for two hundred miles rather than dance.

Richard listened intently, interrupting once to offer cool water.

Although he did not understand what Deacon was talking about, he could see that the man's life was uninhabitable. Deacon began to speak of a woman he had used; how he had turned up his nose at her because her loose and easy ways gave him the license to drop and despise her. That while the adultery preyed on him for a short while (very short), his long remorse was at having become what the Old Fathers cursed: the kind of man who set himself up to judge, rout and even destroy the needy, the defenseless, the different. "Who is this woman?" Richard asked him.

Deacon did not answer. He ran his finger around the inside of his shirt collar, then started on another story. It seemed his grandfather, Zechariah, was subject to personal taunts as well as newspaper articles describing his malfeasance in office. He was an embarrassment to Negroes and both a threat and a joke to whites. No one, black or white, could or would help him find other work. He was even passed up for a teaching job at a poor country primary school. The Negroes in a position to help were few (the depression of '73 was severe), but they took Zechariah's dignified manner for coldness and his studied speech for arrogance, mockery or both. The family lost the nice house and were living (all nine of them) with a sister's family. Mindy, his wife, found work sewing at home, and the children did odd jobs. Few knew and fewer remembered that Zechariah had a twin, and before he changed his name, they were known as Coffee and Tea. When Coffee got the statehouse job, Tea seemed as pleased as everybody else. And when his brother was thrown out of office, he was equally affronted and humiliated. One day, years later, when he and his twin were walking near a saloon, some whitemen, amused by the double faces, encouraged the brothers to dance. Since the encouragement took the form of a pistol, Tea, quite reasonably, accommodated the whites, even though he was a grown man, older than they were. Coffee took a bullet in his foot instead. From that moment they weren't brothers anymore. Coffee began to plan a new life elsewhere. He contacted other men, other former legislators who had the same misfortune as his-Juvenal DuPres and Drum Blackhorse. They were the three who formed the nucleus of the Old Fathers. Needless to say, Coffee didn't ask Tea to join them on their journey to Oklahoma.

"I always thought Coffee-Big Papa-was wrong," said Deacon Morgan. "Wrong in what he did to his brother. Tea was his twin, after all. Now I'm less sure. I'm thinking Coffee was right because he saw something in Tea that wasn't just going along with some drunken whiteboys. He saw something that shamed him. The way his brother thought about things; the choices he made when up against it. Coffee couldn't take it. Not because he was ashamed of his twin, but because the shame was in himself. It scared him. So he went off and never spoke to his brother again. Not one word. Know what I mean?"

"It must have been hard," said Richard.

"I'm saying he never said another word to him and wouldn't allow anybody else to call his name."

"Lack of words," Richard said. "Lack of forgiveness. Lack of love. To lose a brother is a hard thing. To choose to lose one, well, that's worse than the original shame, wouldn't you say?" Deacon looked down at his feet for a long time. Richard stayed quiet with him. Finally he raised his head and said: "I got a long way to go, Reverend."

"You'll make it," said Richard Misner. "No doubt about it. " Richard and Anna doubted the convenient mass disappearance of the victims and, as soon as they got back, went to look for themselves. Other than a sparkling white crib in a bedroom with the word divine taped to the door, and foodstuffs, there was nothing recently lived-in about the place. The chickens were wilding or half eaten by fourfooted prowlers. Pepper bushes were in full flower, but the rest of the garden was lost. Sargeant's cornfield the only human touch. Richard barely glanced at the cellar floor. Anna, however, examining it as closely as her lamp permitted, saw the terribleness K. D. reported, but it wasn't the pornography he had seen, nor was it Satan's scrawl. She saw instead the turbulence of females trying to bridle, without being trampled, the monsters that slavered them.

They left the house and stood in the yard.

"Listen," Anna told him. "One of them or maybe more wasn't dead. Nobody actually looked-they just assumed. Then, between the time folks left and Roger arrived, they got the hell out of there. Taking the killed ones with them. Simple, right?"

"Right," said Misner, but he didn't sound convinced.

"It's been weeks now, and nobody has come around asking questions.

They must not have reported it, so why should we?"

"Whose baby was in there? That crib is new."

"I don't know, but it sure wasn't Arnette's."

He said it again, "Right," with the same level of doubt. Then, "I don't like mysteries."

"You're a preacher. Your whole life's belief is a mystery."

"Belief is mysterious; faith is mysterious. But God is not a mystery.

We are."

"Oh, Richard," she said as though it was all too much.

He had asked her to marry him. "Will you marry me, Anna?"

"Oh, I don't know."

"Why not?"

"Your fire's too stingy."

"Not when it counts."

She had never expected to be that happy and coming back to Ruby, instead of making the great announcement, they were sorting out what looked like the total collapse of a town.

"Should we take those chickens? They'll all be eaten anyway."

"If you want to," he said.

"I don't. I'll just see if there're any eggs." Anna entered the henhouse wrinkling her nose and stepping through a half inch of chicken litter. She fought a couple of them to get the five eggs that she thought were probably fresh. When she came out, both hands full, she called, "Richard? Got something I can put these in?" At the edge of the garden a faded red chair lay on its side. Beyond was blossom and death.

Shriveled tomato plants alongside crops of leafy green reseeding themselves with golden flowers; pink hollyhocks so tall the heads leaned all the way over a trail of bright squash blossoms; lacy tops of carrots browned and lifeless next to straight green spikes of onion. Melons split their readiness showing gums of juicy red. Anna sighed at the mix of neglect and unconquerable growth. The five eggs warm umber in her hands.

Richard came toward her. "This big enough?" He flicked open his handkerchief.

"Maybe. Here, hold them while I see if the peppers are out."

"No," he said. "I'll go." He dropped the handkerchief over the eggs.

It was when he returned, as they stood near the chair, her hands balancing brown eggs and white cloth, his fingers looking doubled with long pepper pods-green, red and plum black-that they saw it. Or sensed it, rather, for there was nothing to see. A door, she said later.

"No, a window," he said, laughing. "That's the difference between us.

You see a door; I see a window."

Anna laughed too. They expanded on the subject: What did a door mean? what a window? focusing on the sign rather than the event; excited by the invitation rather than the party. They knew it was there. Knew it so well they were transfixed for a long moment before they backed away and ran to the car. The eggs and peppers lay in the rear seat; the air conditioner lifted her collar. And they laughed some more as they drove along, trading pleasant insults about who was a pessimist, who an optimist. Who saw a closed door; who saw a raised window. Anything to avoid reliving the shiver or saying out loud what they were wondering. Whether through a door needing to be opened or a beckoning window already raised, what would happen if you entered? What would be on the other side? What on earth would it be? What on earth?

Reverend Misner had everyone's attention and just a few words more to offer. His glance focused on the culpable men, seven of whom, with some primitive instinct for protection, clustered together, away, it seemed from the other mourners. Sargeant, Harper, Menus, Arnold, Jeff, K.D., Steward. Wisdom was closest to his own family; and Deacon was not there at all. Richard's thoughts about these men were not generous. Whether they be the first or the last, representing the oldest black families or the newest, the best of the tradition or the most pathetic, they had ended up betraying it all. They think they have outfoxed the whiteman when in fact they imitate him. They think they are protecting their wives and children, when in fact they are maiming them. And when the maimed children ask for help, they look elsewhere for the cause. Born out of an old hatred, one that began when one kind of black man scorned another kind and that kind took the hatred to another level, their selfishness had trashed two hundred years of suffering and triumph in a moment of such pomposity and error and callousness it froze the mind. Unbridled by Scripture, deafened by the roar of its own history, Ruby, it seemed to him, was an unnecessary failure. How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it. Soon Ruby will be like any other country town: the young thinking of elsewhere; the old full of regret. The sermons will be eloquent but fewer and fewer will pay attention or connect them to everyday life. How can they hold it together, he wondered, this hard-won heaven defined only by the absence of the unsaved, the unworthy and the strange? Who will protect them from their leaders? Suddenly Richard Misner knew he would stay. Not only because Anna wanted to, or because Deek Morgan had sought him out for a confession of sorts, but also because there was no better battle to fight, no better place to be than among these outrageously beautiful, flawed and proud people. Besides, mortality may be new to them but birth was not. The future panted at the gate. Roger Best will get his gas station and the connecting roads will be laid. Outsiders will come and go, come and go and some will want a sandwich and a can of 3.2 beer. So who knows, maybe there will be a diner too. K.D. and Steward will already be discussing TV. It was inappropriate to smile at a funeral, so Misner envisioned the little girl whose destroyed hands he had once been permitted to hold. It helped him recover his line of thought. The questions he had asked in the mourners' stead needed an answer.

"May I suggest those are not the important questions. Or rather those are the questions of anguish but not of intelligence. And God, being intelligence itself, generosity itself, has given us Mind to know His subtlety. To know His elegance. His purity. To know that 'what is sown is not alive until it dies.' " The wind picked up a bit but not enough to make anyone uncomfortable. Misner was losing them; they stood before the open grave closed to everything but their own musings. Funeral thoughts were mingled with plans for Thanksgiving, evaluations of their neighbors, the chitty-chat of daily life. Misner repressed a sigh before concluding his remarks with prayer. But when he bowed his head and gazed at the coffin lid he saw the window in the garden, felt it beckon toward another place-neither life nor death-but there, just yonder, shaping thoughts he did not know he had.

"Wait. Wait." He was shouting. "Do you think this was a short, pitiful life bereft of worth because it did not parallel your own? Let me tell you something. The love she received was wide and deep, and the care given her was gentle and unrelenting, and that love and care enveloped her so completely that the dreams, the visions she had, the journeys she took made her life as compelling, as rich, as valuable as any of ours and probably more blessed. It is our own misfortune if we do not know in our long life what she knew every day of her short one: that although life in life is terminal and life after life is everlasting, He is with us always, in life, after it and especially in between, lying in wait for us to know the splendor." He stopped, disturbed by what he had said and how. Then, as if to apologize to the little girl, he spoke softly, directly to her.

"Oh, Save-Marie, your name always sounded like 'Save me.'

'Save me.' Any other messages hiding in your name? I know one that shines out for all to see: there never was a time when you were not saved, Marie. Amen."

His words embarrassed him a little, but on that day, nothing had ever been clearer.

Billie Delia walked slowly away from the other mourners. She had stood with her mother and grandfather and smiled encouragingly at Arnette, but now she wanted to be alone. This was her first funeral, and she thought about it in terms of how expansive it made her grandfather to have his skills needed. More on her mind was the absence of the women she had liked. They had treated her so well, had not embarrassed her with sympathy, had just given her sunny kindness. Looking at her bruised face and swollen eyes, they sliced cucumber for her lids after making her drink a glass of wine. No one insisted on hearing what drove her there, but she could tell they would listen if she wanted them to. The one called Mavis was the nicest and the funniest was Gigi. Billie Delia was perhaps the only one in town who was not puzzled by where the women were or concerned about how they disappeared. She had another question: When will they return? When will they reappear, with blazing eyes, war paint and huge hands to rip up and stomp down this prison calling itself a town. A town that had tried to ruin her grandfather, succeeded in swallowing her mother and almost broken her own self. A backward noplace ruled by men whose power to control was out of control and who had the nerve to say who could live and who not and where; who had seen in lively, free, unarmed females the mutiny of the mares and so got rid of them. She hoped with all her heart that the women were out there, darkly burnished, biding their time, brass-metaling their nails, filing their incisors-but out there. Which is to say she hoped for a miracle. Not so unreasonable a wish since a minimiracle had already occurred: Brood and Apollo had reconciled, agreeing to wait for her to make up her mind. She knew, as they did, that she never could and that the threesome would end only when they did. The Convent women would roar at that. She could see their pointy teeth.

The reprieve took years but it came. Manley Gibson would die in a ward with others like himself rather than strapped to a chair with no kin looking on. It was a good thing. A great thing. He got to go outside and now he was part of the work crew at the lake road. The lake was so blue. The Kentucky Fried Chicken lunch so fine. Maybe he could run. Some joke. A fifty-two-year-old lifer on the run. Where to? To who? He had been in since 1961, leaving behind an elevenyear-old who didn't write anymore, and the only photograph he had of her was when she was thirteen.

Lunchtime was special. They sat near the lake in full sight of the guards but near the water anyway. Manley wiped his hands on the little paper napkins. To his left, near a couple of trees, a young woman spread two blankets on the grass, a radio in between. Manley turned to see what the crew thought of this: a civilian (and a female, too) right in their midst. Armed guards strolled the road above them. None gave sign that they saw her.

She turned on the radio and stood up, revealing a face he'd know anywhere. For the life of him he couldn't help it. "Gigi!" he hissed. The girl looked his way. Manley, restraining himself, sauntered over to the trees, hoping the guards would think he was taking a leak. "Am I right? Is it you?"

"Daddy Man?" At least she looked pleased to see him. "It is you! Goddamn, I knew it. What you doing here? You knew I was reprieved?"

"No, I didn't know nothing about it."

"Well, look here, I don't get out or nothing, but I ain't on the row no more." Manley turned to see if others had noticed them. "Keep your voice down," he whispered. "So what you doing here?" He noticed her clothes for the first time. "You in the army?" Gigi smiled. "Sort of."

"Sort of? You mean you was?"

"Oh, Daddy Man, anybody can buy this stuff." Gigi laughed.

"Gimme your address, honey. I wanna write and tell you everything. Hear from your mother? Her old man still alive?" He was rushing; the lunch whistle was due to sound any minute.

"I don't have an address yet." Gigi lifted her cap and replaced it. "No? Well, uh, you write me, okay? Care of the prison. I'll put you on the list tomorrow. I can get two a month-" The whistle blew. "Two," Manley repeated. Then, "Say, you still got that locket I give you?"

"I got it."

"Ooh, honey, oh, honey, my little girl." He reached out to touch her but stopped, saying, "I gotta go. They'll demerit me. Care of the prison, hear? Two a month." He backed away, still looking at her. "Will I hear from you?"

Gigi straightened her cap. "You will, Daddy Man. You will." Later, as Manley sat on the bus, he went over every detail of what he had seen of his daughter. Her army cap and fatigue pants-camouflage colors. Heavy army boots, black T-shirt. And now that he thought of it, he could swear she was packing. He looked toward the lake, darkening in a lower but prettier sun.

Gigi took off her clothes. The nights were chilling the lake, making it harder and harder for the sun to warm it the next day. In this part of the lake it was okay to swim nude. This was lake country: viridian water, upright trees and-in places where no boats or fishermen came-a privacy royals would envy. She picked up a towel and dried her hair.

Less than an inch had grown, but she loved how wind and water and fingers and toes rippled in it. She opened a bottle of aloe and began to rub her skin. Then, straightening the towel next to her, she looked toward the lake where her companion was just coming ashore. The fifteenth painting, like the first, needed more. Trying to remember the chin had frustrated Dee Dee in her first attempt, but when she decided to skip the jawline and just shadow the lower part of her daughter's face, she found the eyes all wrong. Canvas fifteen got it better, but still something was missing. The head was fine, but the body, bleak and uninteresting, seemed to need another shape-at the hip or elbow. Never having experienced a compulsion that was not sensual, she was puzzled by the energy she could summon at will to freshen or begin the figure anew. The eyes kept coming up accusatory; the skin tone eluded her; and the hair was invariably a hat. Dee Dee sat down on the floor, rolling the brush handle in her fingers while she examined the work she had done. With a long puff of air she got up and went into the living room. It was when she had taken the first sip of the margarita that she saw her coming across the yard, a knapsack or something tied to her chest. But she had no hair. No hair at all and a baby's head lay just under her chin. As she came closer, Dee Dee could see two fat legs, round as doughnuts, poking out of the knapsack thing on its mother's chest. She put down the margarita and pressed her face to the picture window. No mistake. It was Pallas. One hand on the knapsack bottom, the other carrying a sword. A sword?

The smile on Pallas' face was beatific. And her dress-rose madder and umber-swirled about her ankles with every step. Dee Dee waved and called out her name. Or tried to. While she thought "Pallas," formed it in her mind, it came out different, like "urg," then "neh neh." Something was wrong with her tongue. Pallas was moving quickly but not coming toward the front door. She was moving past the house, to the side. Dee Dee, in a panic, ran into the studio, grabbed the fifteenth canvas and rushed to the patio, holding it up and shouting, "Urg. Urg. Neh!" Pallas turned, narrowed her eyes and paused as if trying to determine where the sound came from, then, failing, continued on her way. Dee Dee stopped, thinking maybe it was someone else. But with or without hair, that was her face, wasn't it? She of all people knew her own daughter's face, didn't she? As well as she knew her own.

Dee Dee saw Pallas a second time. In the guest bedroom (where Carlos-the motherfucker-used to sleep), Pallas was searching under the bed. As Dee Dee watched, not daring to speak in case the glug sound came out of her mouth, Pallas raised up. With a satisfied grunt, she held aloft a pair of shoes she'd left there on her last, and first, visit. Huaraches, but expensive leather ones, not that plastic or straw stuff. Pallas didn't turn; she left through the sliding glass door. Dee Dee followed and saw her get into a beat-up car waiting on the road. Other people were in the car but the sun was setting so Dee Dee couldn't tell if they were men or women. They drove off into a violet so ultra it broke her heart.

Sally Albright, walking north on Calumet, stopped suddenly in front of the plate-glass window of Jennie's Country Inn. She was sure, almost sure, that the woman sitting by herself at a table for four was her mother. Sally moved closer to peep under the woman's straw hat. She couldn't quite see the face but the fingernails, the hands holding the menu were indisputable. She went inside the restaurant. A lady near the cash register said, "May I help you?" Everyplace Sally went now, she gave folks pause. All because of her hair color. "No," she told the lady. "I'm looking for a-Oh, there she is," and, faking assuredness, sauntered over to the table for four. If she was wrong, she'd say, "'Scuse me, I thought you was somebody else." She slipped into a chair and looked closely at the woman's face.

"Mom?"

Mavis looked up. "Oh, my," she said, smiling. "Look at you."

"I wasn't sure, the hat and all, but God, look, it is you."

Mavis laughed.

"Oh, man. I knew it. God, Mom, it's been… years!"

"I know. Have you eaten?"

"Yeah. Just finished. I'm on my lunch hour. I work at-" The waitress raised her order pad. "Have you all decided yet?"

"Yes," said Mavis. "Orange juice, double grits and two eggs over medium."

"Bacon?" asked the waitress.

"No, thanks."

"We got good sausage-link and patty."

"No, thanks. You serve gravy with the biscuits?"

"Sure do. Poured or on the side?"

"On the side, please."

"Sure thing. And you?" She turned to Sally.

"Just coffee."

"Oh, come on," said Mavis. "Have something. My treat."

"I don't want anything."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure."

The waitress left. Mavis lined up the place mat and flatware. "That's what I like about this place. They let you choose. Gravy poured or on the side, see?"

"Mom! I don't want to talk about food." Sally felt as though her mother was sliding away, acting like their seeing each other wasn't important.

"Well, you never did have much of an appetite."

"Where've you been?"

"Well, I couldn't come back, could I?"

"You mean that warrant stuff?"

"I mean everything. How about you? You been all right?"

"Mostly. Frankie's fine. Gets all A's. But Billy James ain't so hot."

"Oh. Why?"

"Hangs out with some real scary little shits."

"Oh, no."

"You should go see him, Ma. Talk to him."

"I will."

"Will you?"

"Can I have my lunch first?" Mavis laughed and removed her hat.

"Ma. You cut your hair off." There it was again-that slidey feeling.

"It looks nice, though. How you like mine?"

"Cute."

"No it ain't. Thought I'd like blond tips, but I'm tired of it now.

Maybe I'll cut mine too."

The waitress arrived and neatly arranged the plates. Mavis salted her grits and swirled the pat of butter on top. She sipped her orange juice and said, "Ooo. Fresh."

It came out in a rush because she felt she had to hurry. If she was going to say anything, she had to hurry. "I was scared all the time, Ma. All the time. Even before the twins. But when you left, it got worse.

You don't know. I mean I was scared to fall asleep."

"Taste this, honey." Mavis offered her the glass of juice. Sally took a quick swallow. "Daddy was-shit, I don't know how you stood it. He'd get drunk and try to bother me, Ma."

"Oh, baby."

"I fought him, though. Told him the next time he passed out I was gonna cut his throat open. Would have, too."

"I'm so sorry," said Mavis. "I didn't know what else to do. You were always stronger than me."

"Did you never think about us?"

"All the time. And I sneaked back to get a peep at you all."

"No shit?" Sally grinned. "Where?"

"At the school, mostly. I was too scared to go by the house."

"You wouldn't know it now. Daddy married a woman who kicks his butt if he don't act right and keep the yard clean and stuff. She packs a gun, too."

Mavis laughed. "Good for her."

"But I moved out. Me and Charmaine got us a place together over on Auburn. She's a-"

"You sure you don't want something? It's really good, Sal." Sally picked up a fork, slipped it into her mother's plate, scooping up a buttery dollop of grits. When the fork was in her mouth, their eyes met. Sally felt the nicest thing then. Something long and deep and slow and bright.

"You gonna leave again, Ma?"

"I have to, Sal."

"You coming back?"

"Sure."

"But you'll try and talk to Billy James, won't you? And Frankie'd love it. You want my address?"

"I'll talk to Billy and tell Frankie I love him."

"I'm sick and sorry about everything, Ma. I was just so scared all the time."

"Me too."

They were standing outside. The lunch crowd thickened with shoppers and their kids.

"Gimme a hug, baby."

Sally put her arms around her mother's waist and began to cry.

"Uh uh," said Mavis. "None of that, now."

Sally squeezed.

"Ouch," said Mavis, laughing.

"What?"

"Nothing. That side hurts a bit, that's all."

"You okay?"

"I'm perfect, Sal."

"I don't know what you think about me, but I always loved, always, even when."

"I know that, Sal. Know it now anyway." Mavis pushed a shank of black and yellow hair behind her daughter's ear and kissed her cheek. "Count on me, Sal."

"See you again, won't I?"

"Bye, Sal. Bye."

Sally watched her mother disappear into the crowd. She ran her finger under her nose, then held the cheek that had been kissed. Did she give her the address? Where was she going? Did they pay? When did they pay the cashier? Sally touched her eyelids. One minute they were sopping biscuits; the next they were kissing in the street.

Several years ago she had checked out the foster home and saw the mother-a cheerful, no-nonsense woman the kids seemed to like. So, fine. That was it. Fine. She could go on with her life. And did. Until 1966, when her gaze was drawn to girls with huge chocolate eyes. Seneca would be older now, thirteen years old, but she checked with Mrs. Greer to see if she had kept in touch.

"Who are you, again?"

"Her cousin, Jean."

"Well, she was only here for a short while-a few months really."

"Do you know where…?"

"No, honey. I don't know a thing."

After that she was unexpectedly distracted in malls, theater ticket lines, buses. In 1968 she was certain she spotted her at a Little Richard concert, but the press of the crowd prevented a closer look. Jean was discreet about this subversive search. Jack didn't know she'd had a child before (at fourteen), and it was after marriage, when she had his child, that she began the search for the eyes. The sightings came at such odd moments and in such strange places-once she believed the girl climbing out the back of a pickup truck was her daughter-that when she finally bumped into her, in 1976, she wanted to call an ambulance. Jean and Jack were crossing the stadium parking lot under blazing klieg lights. A girl was standing in front of a car, blood running from her hands. Jean saw the blood first and then the chocolate eyes. "Seneca!" she screamed, and ran toward her. As she approached she was intercepted by another girl, who, holding a bottle of beer and a cloth, began to clean away the blood.

"Seneca?" Jean shouted over the second girl's head.

"Yes?"

"What happened? It's me!"

"Some glass," said the second girl. "She fell on some glass. I'm taking care of her."

"Jean! Come on!" Jack was several cars down. "Where the hell are you?"

"Coming. Just a minute, okay?"

The girl wiping Seneca's hands looked up from time to time to frown at Jean. "Any glass get in?" she asked Seneca. Seneca stroked her palms, first one, then the other. "No. I don't think so."

"Jean! Traffic's gonna be hell, babe."

"Don't you remember me?"

Seneca looked up, the bright lights turning her eyes black.

"Should I? From where?"

"On Woodlawn. We used to live in those apartments on Woodlawn."

Seneca shook her head. "I lived on Beacon. Next to the playground."

"But your name is Seneca, right?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm Jean."

"Lady, your old man's calling you." The girlfriend wrung out the cloth and poured the rest of the beer over Seneca's hands. "Ow," Seneca said to her friend. "It burns." She waved her hands in the air.

"Guess I made a mistake," said Jean. "I thought you were someone I knew from Woodlawn."

Seneca smiled. "That's okay. Everybody makes mistakes."

The friend said, "It's fine now. Look."

Seneca and Jean both looked. Her hands were clean, no blood.

Just a few lines that might or might not leave marks.

"Great!"

"Let's go."

"Well, bye."

"Jean!"

"Bye."

Gunning the gas pedal while watching his rearview mirror, Jack said, "Who was that?"

"Some girl I thought I knew from before. When I lived in those apartments on Woodlawn. The housing project there."

"What housing project?"

"On Woodlawn."

"Never any projects on Woodlawn," said Jack. "That was Beacon. Torn down now, but it was never on Woodlawn. Beacon is where it was. Right next to the old playground."

"You sure about that?"

"Sure I'm sure. You losing it, woman."

In ocean hush a woman black as firewood is singing. Next to her is a younger woman whose head rests on the singing woman's lap. Ruined fingers troll the tea brown hair. All the colors of seashells-wheat, roses, pearl-fuse in the younger woman's face. Her emerald eyes adore the black face framed in cerulean blue. Around them on the beach, sea trash gleams. Discarded bottle caps sparkle near a broken sandal. A small dead radio plays the quiet surf.

There is nothing to beat this solace which is what Piedade's song is about, although the words evoke memories neither one has ever had: of reaching age in the company of the other; of speech shared and divided bread smoking from the fire; the unambivalent bliss of going home to be at home-the ease of coming back to love begun. When the ocean heaves sending rhythms of water ashore, Piedade looks to see what has come. Another ship, perhaps, but different, heading to port, crew and passengers, lost and saved, atremble, for they have been disconsolate for some time. Now they will rest before shouldering the endless work they were created to do down here in paradise.

The End