Solemn (18 page)

“You're too kind, too kind, to let me stop by here on my tour,” Mrs. Weathers told them all. This silver broach on her lapel struck back a ray of light cast by the sunshine in the back window of the trailer. “Oh please, sit, sit.”

She fanned her hands at us. Finally, we all sat. Then Mama got up to give her a sampler plate from everything there. Mrs. Longwood brought her the hummingbird cake, perfect triangle on a circle dish. The ladies stuck their pinky fingers out while they nibbled on their crackers and desserts. Outside the television and right in front of us, the woman looked so much smaller and weaker and softer. She spoke in between chewin, whiskeyed sweet tea to wash it down. President Bush came on the television to address the nation. Mrs. Longwood turned the television off. Then, we all started to listen to Mrs. Weathers. We liked her face right here with us now.

“We must be grateful for everything we have,” Mrs. Weathers told the intent women. “And, no matter how useless it might seem to challenge our challengers, stand up—always. Never, ever lie down. Always, no matter how tired or weak or sick you get, how pushed aside you are, stand up. You'll be happier that way. From any one situation you can look at it from too many sides and angles to ever be mad about one. Some folks good at spreading the frosting. Others need to lick the bowl clean. We all have a place.”

She put her eyes on me without even movin em, seem like: “Come here, girl.”

I moved through the big bottoms and flared skirts to stand before the woman. Mrs. Weathers grabbed my arms tight at the wrists. I kept contact with the lady's eyes, pink-rimmed and speckled with bronze spots at the corners like pennies in a well.

“Do you understand, and know who you are? What makes you special?” the Mrs. Weathers from the television asked me. Everybody else paused and waited for me. And I really tried to answer, but nothin came. Mrs. Weathers shook and shook on our weak kitchen chair. Then she pushed back to laugh at me and I just stood there. Mrs. Longwood just put her hands on her hips and tilted her head, to shake and shuffle her auburn hair more let loose than it was anyway. Mama looked happy next to her friend.

“You think it's some oasis somewhere waiting on you out there?”

I had heard of a oasis, but couldn't recall what it was. I was too shamed to ask.

“No ma'am,” sounded safe.

“You don't know?” Mrs. Weathers teased. “Haven't figured it out? Y'all ain't tell the girl yet?”

“Tell me what?” I wanted to know. “What?”

And then Mama woke me up for supper.

 

FIFTEEN

“What the hell we need to make statements about?” Redvine asked his wife.

“How should I know?” Bev told him. “Stephanie ain't talking yet. It was Theo came by … said there was mess said 'bout Desiree being underage and unattended to, that's all. Mississippi Children's Home Services gotta investigate, I guess.”

“We under investigation too, then?”

“No, Red. Solemn ain't get hurt.”

“What the State gonna do, take the rest of they kids? The poor folks ain't got none other. Shit happens.”

“Well that's what we gotta let 'em know, Redvine…”

“I ain't cool with taking Solemn to deal with no police,” Redvine said. “I'm all for respecting the law. But I gotta side with Landon on this one.”

“We don't have a choice.”

“Lemme least get a beer or two in me 'fore we talk about it any further. Shit…”

Two six-packs and one dawn and a quick car wash at a two-dollar do-it-yourself station later, the gas in the Malibu stretched to the police station. Back remained to be seen. Solemn still hadn't changed her clothes. To make matters worse, she started her period. Except for a few times Redvine fussed with the wannabe wrong crowd and jumped too bad with a white person for it, none of them had ever been in the station. Once the trio broke past the gristle of a half-dozen homeless staked out at side of the building in silent protest, the station was at least air-conditioned inside. Bev sat down in a chair alongside a wall. Solemn sat beside her. Redvine went to the front counter, spoke with a blond female officer. There was a vending machine. Vents rattled out cool air. Office doors opened to clean rooms. White tile floors shone. Redvine put one elbow against the counter and a hand in the pocket of a sports jacket he threw on over blue jeans. He chilled like he did when he made bets at the greyhound track he took the family to, on motel trips to Arkansas back in better days, serious and more distinguished with each wage.

“Where are the cells?” Solemn asked her mama.

“The what?”

“The cells … for all the people got to get put in jail?”

“Oh, they got 'em all right.”

“This look way too nice to be a jail.”

“This ain't the main one. This just the first stop. Nothing nice 'bout that last one at all…”

Redvine came over to his family.

“We gotta wait to talk to that cop, you know, the black fella. Make statements.”

“How long we gotta sit in jail?” Solemn asked her daddy.

“Long enough.”

“Can I get something from the vending machine?”

Redvine went into his pocket to pull out four dull quarters. Solemn stepped away from them, closer to the area of the station where a few interrogation rooms and the cubicles were. Her mouth watered: Doritos, Flamin' Hot Cheetos, Pepsi, Coke, Sprite. She had trouble figuring out what to do with her coins. Around the bend, near where the restrooms were, she sensed something to look at. She glanced back at Bev and Redvine, talking among themselves, the automatic habit of grown-ups. The bathrooms were within eyeshot. She could say she had gone there. Her mama knew she had her time now. The officers who had rumbled with laughter in the corner vanished to work now. The blond officer sat on the phone at the front counter. Solemn slipped away.

Down a hall, stock gray square desks with heavy telephones and many papers—so many papers in their belligerent and grumpy piles—were vacant of busy cops sitting at them. This was nothing like the police stations Solemn imagined and saw and fantasized about from scarce episodes of
Law & Order
or
21 Jump Street
she caught. The clocks seemed to be off, dusty and cross-eyed. A radio played honky-tonk, bluesy and throaty and raw. The facilities smelled clinical and clear, not nearly as beguiling as the hospital halls. Its blandness was inviting but disappointing. Solemn wavered a bit, but then she continued on. She was unnoticed, in her same clothes from Easter still—a new outfit nonetheless, so as better to discount any grime collected over the days. How no one could see a thick-haired black gal in days-old clothes wander through the main police precinct with her parents nowhere in sight confirmed the forced anonymity Solemn resented. She went on anyway. She happened upon a room where four persons sat slumped over in deep conversation behind a window.

And who and what she saw stirred the innermost arousal inside of her, pleasure so strong it grew into a light head and dizziness not even her recent event in question had overcome her with: inside the room, with an older man and two officers in a uniform, was the woman from the television … Viola Weathers. The “poor woman's” mother, no mirage. Solemn stopped dead.

She was much smaller and softer than she always appeared on the television. It
was
the woman from the television, alive and real. A celebrity—like Oprah or J. Lo. Had Solemn not been frozen into place she could have touched her with her own two hands and felt what it was like to have a real famous person at her fingertips, in all the imagined glory it was. Only now, the woman appeared just like her—decipherable and pat. She wore no makeup on her face.

“There must be something, something to do,” she cried, naked of her chunky earrings and pearls. The white officer stood up, stepped back, lost his place.

And the brown officer Solemn recognized listened. The older man from the television as well sat stiff and somber. The brown officer met eyes with Solemn—stiffened at sight and sudden remembrance of her.

“I won't rest … I can't!” Viola Weathers shouted to them all.

The brown cop came to the woman from the television, told her to calm down.

“Now, Mrs. Weathers, we doing our best, but your daughter done this before and we gotta…” the white man tried to say.

Viola stopped him. “You will
not
slander my little girl. If she was a white gal with even more you could say, then the more'd be an unmentionable. Pearly's a good girl.”

She was nowhere near calm but not close to hysterical. She had no cameras, and still she had a mission: a voice heard. Viola Weathers looked up at the side window in the room. She locked eyes with Solemn—

*   *   *

“Not too much different than my girl was at your age,” she say to me … “Go back to your mama, child. Or wait! Help me.”

I stood still right there and let the woman from the television look at me.

“How?” I asked her.

“Help me.” The woman was smiling at me, grin drawn back to her ears.

“What should I do?” I really wanted to know.

“Whatever you can,” she told me. “It'll come to you.”

“Solemn!”

Mama was behind me.

*   *   *

Bev was gentle due to the situation, just trying to get in and out with no drama.

“Who you talking to down here all by yourself?” she asked. Solemn pointed to the window, wanted to say more to the woman from the television. But Viola Weathers snapped back away from her, into the men again. Bev glanced into the room, saw the private meeting. She grabbed Solemn's arm.

“But, but…” Solemn said.

“No buts … Now ain't the time for you to be actin' strange.”

“But … it's the woman from television.”

Beverly looked in. Shole was. Up until that point, Pearletta Hassle was only a thing to feel guilty about. Guilt was always mystery enough. But now the situation of her missing morphed into true fact. Bev didn't want to be nosy, but she couldn't help it.

“She's my child … you get to work!” the woman from the television howled.

And the white man nodded back to her, in order and in check. Respecting even. Viola Weathers was not the least bit daunted to stand strong in the face of a white while in the throes of some pain. He was intimidated by her. Solemn could tell. And Solemn had never seen a thing like it in her life. Now, she would do everything in her power, for the famous black lady from television and that poor woman down the way.

In a matter of minutes of more waiting, jail enough, Solemn saw the brown officer come out from behind the back and wave to them. She wanted to see the woman from the television again. Solemn was so giddy to think of it she tapped her hands at the chair's hard arms. But Viola Weathers did not appear behind him. The station had a back door.

Redvine arose to shake Bolden's hand: “Sir,” her daddy called the brown officer.

When Bev arose and Solemn got ready to do so too, the men motioned them to sit down. Solemn had imagined she was here to solve something. How could she solve anything if she sat down? Her daddy and the cop went to the counter to chat, as perfunctory as bartender to alcoholic they seemed. They were the same complexion, same color, and nearly the same height except for the officer threw his shoulders back while Redvine's hung a bit. They met eye to eye, nose to nose, chuckle to chuckle.

Back in the car, the letdowns droned on when Earl turned off Nelly's song for the station of all his old songs Solemn was sick of. She hadn't even bought a thing to eat.

“Well, what we have to come all the way here for?” Bev asked Redvine.

“I handled it,” Redvine said.

“I thought we was gonna get to talk?” Solemn asked. No one heard her.

“Well, bring Solemn all the way down here, in light of what's going on … we coulda stayed home.” Bev was disappointed. Bad enough she had to leave her classes.

“I just explained the Longwoods were good peoples,” Bolden said, and he turned up an old song he knew Bev liked a lot. “The man knew what I meant.”

*   *   *

As quickly as it blossomed, the friendship with the Longwoods unraveled like knitting with its lead string tugged. Solemn's sheer fortune to have wobbled with the Longwood girl marked a mixed blessing; this type of fortune crossed the boundaries of decency to celebrate. In absence of congratulations for her luck and help, Solemn had the pall of a Barabbas. Nobody ever knew the Longwoods' daughter to run off before …

The Longwoods' fig and peach trees commenced blooming, shielding the family until Desiree came out—in a red sundress—straight to the Imperial. Solemn watched them all drive out the gate. The future she imagined—of growing up with a girl to be measured with, each new bit of breast or grown-out hairstyle, if their prom dresses would have matched, if they would have gone to the same schools, if they would have married brothers—sank. Desiree was supposed to stay part of Solemn's story, with no escape. Now one was phantom of accusation for the other. Solemn's association with the plagues of sorrow set down on Bledsoe clung to her name and back. She sensed them all talking about her. Like that poor woman, that poor baby. Now she was that “strange” gal.

Other than “Tell your mama I said ‘Hi,'” the last time Solemn talked to Stephanie Longwood was almost the last day Stephanie Longwood talked to her daughter Desiree. And Bev, too. They switched from friends to second thoughts. Grudges are unbecoming. If the mothers had ever ventured to talk in depth again, both would agree they both agreed to the extra bingo game. To exonerate the survivor. To keep it civil. To be fair.