Third Girl from the Left (20 page)

The morning passed in its usual, quiet rhythm. Joe had another Coke, Johnny Lee dispensed medicines, cigarettes, advice, a friendly word, to everyone who came in. Around noon, the bell rang and a man Johnny Lee had seen only a few times came in. Sometimes he came in for cigarettes, but he never had much to say. Johnny Lee didn't share his wife's love of the pictures or he might have known it was the projectionist. “What can I get you?” Johnny Lee said.

The man looked at him quickly, then away. “Pack of Kools.”

“Anything else?”

“Nope, that'll be all.” He seemed nervous. Johnny Lee couldn't figure it out. The man was the kind that a woman would find good-looking—smooth and polished. His skin had a kind of glow. He sounded like he wasn't from around here. He paid and then went on his way. He gave Johnny Lee a quick, penetrating look before he left. Johnny Lee's stomach knotted. But he didn't yet know why.

Once he was gone, Joe looked up from the paper he'd been studiously examining while the man was there. He whistled long and low. “They say that William Henderson's been getting around.”

“What? That cat that just left?” Johnny Lee still felt unsettled. A knowledge was coming to him.

“Well, you see what he look like, don't you, brother? You think a cat like that—they say he used to live in New York City too—ain't been pulling down whatever he likes?” Joe laughed low in his throat. “Shoot. That dog could teach us all a few new tricks.” He laughed again. The words were out of Johnny's mouth before he even knew it: “Joe, I need to run down the street for a minute. I can trust you to help out anybody who comes in, right? Just don't go messing with the medicine. Anybody needs a prescription, tell 'em I'll be back in about ten minutes.”

Joe looked surprised, but then understanding floated into his dark eyes.
He knows
, Johnny Lee thought, suddenly so sad he had to close his eyes for a moment.
Dammit. Who doesn't know
?

“Sure, man. You know I got you covered. Take as long as you need.”

“I'll only be about ten to fifteen minutes,” Johnny Lee said firmly.

“Right,” said Joe, sliding off his stool and stepping behind the counter.

Johnny Lee moved quickly through the streets. People greeted him with a nod of the head or a wave of the hand. Same as always. He knew everyone and they all spoke to him. He spoke right back. Never had it been uncomfortable before. It always reminded him of how necessary he was here, how at home. He had been made to look foolish in his home. He yanked the door of the theater open in a fury and ran up the stairs.

The man was bent over a large machine—Johnny Lee supposed it was how they showed the movies—fiddling with a large wheel with loose stuff on it. Johnny Lee acted before he thought. He stepped forward and shoved him as hard as he could into the machine, which was so heavy that it swayed but didn't fall. The large spoked wheels fell off with a clatter. It was a cheap shot, but Johnny Lee, who usually wasn't that kind, didn't care. “What the . . . ,” said the man, wiping at his now bloodied mouth.

“What's your name? You been fucking my wife. Least you could do is tell me your name.”

He stood up slowly. Johnny Lee thought he'd never seen a man look sadder. “My name's William Henderson. I . . . I'm sorry about your wife.”

“You sorry. You sorry. You bet your smooth-talkin' ass you're sorry. What the hell. What the hell.”

William said nothing for a minute. Didn't raise his hands except to wipe briefly at his mouth again. “I might as well tell you. I'm leaving here. You won't have to worry about me and her again.”

Johnny Lee took a step forward, his hands still in fists. Why didn't he defend himself? How was he gonna hit a man who wouldn't raise his hands? He couldn't. His heart contracted again. He was going to have to live with this forever. There would be no satisfying punch-out, no shaking it out of him, no making it unhappen. “I want you gone by next week.”

“I will be.”

“Don't come around her again.”

“I won't.”

Johnny Lee left. He didn't feel any better. He stopped in the alley next to the theater where no one could see him and spent a few minutes sobbing as he hadn't in years. Then he pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. He had to get back to work. He couldn't leave Joe in charge. This had to end.

He was back behind his counter in a matter of minutes, polishing, polishing. Joe sat at his stool, nursing his Coke and carefully not speaking. The marble surface of the counter gleamed. It needed no more effort. But Johnny Lee kept polishing. It was easier if he kept his mouth shut and never stopped moving.

B
Y THE TIME ANGIE WAS FOURTEEN, MILDRED
couldn't do anything with her. All she did was fight with Jolene and Otis and stay up in her room doing God knew what for half the day on the weekends. That is, when she wasn't trying to go down past the ice cream parlor and switch her little fast butt past all those no-'count Negroes that hung out by the pool hall. It wasn't like Mildred didn't have enough on her mind. It wasn't like she didn't know what happened when you let things get out of hand.

It had been seven years now since she'd said goodbye to William. She'd chosen what she knew was right. Johnny Lee was broken in two, but he didn't leave. And he didn't beat her. And he didn't make her leave. He was a good and loving man. Mildred hung onto that for her life. For a long time after that first night, he slept on the sofa; they told the children he wasn't feeling well. He went to work early in the morning and came home minutes before dinner every night. He talked very little and the children looked from one parent to another at the dinner table with the hunted look of young fawns, Angie especially. Only once, not long after the scene she witnessed, had she ventured to ask about that day. “Mama, where was you that day I broke my arm? Why was Daddy so mad?”

“I did some things I wasn't supposed to do, punkin. That's all. You know how me and Daddy get mad when you don't do like you're supposed to do. That's how Daddy felt. Just mad, that's all.”

Angie studied her seriously. Mildred knew her daughter didn't believe her. “Well, he sure was mad” was all she said, though. Mildred watched her daughter skip off, her arm still tethered to her side. Wasn't slowing her down none. But her mama hadn't been there.

That's what she told William when she told him that she had to end it: that she'd failed her baby. She was so terrified making her way to him for the last time that she thought she might faint. When she saw his face and considered what she had to say she thought she might die. Could words be so hard to say, that you'd die saying them? That day she wondered. The look on his face. “So he found out?”

“Yes, he did, William. And I . . . you know I love you, but . . . I got the kids and he's a good man. I love him too. And what folks would say . . . the kids.” She had trouble making sentences. He looked at her steadily. Not touching her. “Did you tell him it was me?”

“No.” For some reason she couldn't fathom, Johnny Lee had not insisted that she tell him who her lover was. She was baffled but grateful. William nodded.

“I guess we gonna have to go on with our lives from here,” he said.

Her chest hurt so much she could barely speak. “I don't know if I can.” She was crying now. William stepped to her and took her hand. “You can. You have to. I will too.” There were tears in his eyes, but they didn't fall. “You go on now.”

“William . . .”

“Go on. I love you.” He gave her a gentle push toward the door. Before she knew it, she was on the other side. She left the theater and walked up the street as bold as you please. Johnny Lee was at work and she had nothing more to hide.

She sent the children to the pictures without her for a while. She thought she might die between missing the pictures and missing William, but somehow she went on. After about the seventh or eighth time they innocently reported that the man who used to always be out front before the pictures was gone. “You know, Mama, the one who goes upstairs and shows them. Mr. Henderson,” said Jolene. Mildred nodded. Johnny Lee just kept eating. She thought she might have seen a brief movement from him, a look in his eye. But later she thought she'd imagined it. The next day, after everyone was gone to work and school, she found a package wrapped in brown paper on the doorstep with her name on it. It was William's copy of
The Migration of the Negro
, with a note inside.
This belongs to you. So do I. I couldn't see no way to work it out. But I meant what I said. You live in my heart. And if the time ever comes, I'm yours. I'm yours. Love, William
. Lord, how she cried as she hid that book in her wedding chest. Johnny Lee never ever looked in there for nothing. Every now and then when she was in the house alone, she'd get it out and stroke the cover. It still felt like silk under her fingers.

Keeping everything in wore her out. It was like having a light on in the basement all the time; the drain on her energy was slight but constant. She would have liked to tell everything to a girlfriend, but she really had only church-lady friends. She could not have said what was in her heart, especially since they all went to the same movie theater where her lover had worked and bought their menstrual pads and aspirins and stomach remedies from the man she had betrayed. Sometimes she cried. Hard. She missed the sparkly conversations, the shooting-star feeling of being with William. She and Johnny Lee found their way to a bruised truce: not much sex, not much talking, but a hard-edged communion that she took as her due. Sometimes she caught him looking at her over the dinner table with shattered wonderment, and she knew that it was right that she'd stayed but also that he'd carry the pain she'd caused him to his grave. And she had to live with that. But usually she was all right. Except where Angie was concerned.

Today Jolene came home from school and said that everybody was talking because they'd seen Angie out back of the school kissing on Calvin Wiley. “And, Mama, my friend Clara said that they go back there every day and she seen him feeling on her titties! What you gonna do, Mama?” Jolene had to know anything bad that was going to happen to Angela. She almost seemed, in her prudish way, to relish it.

Mildred dropped the sponge she was using on the dishes into the sink with a sigh. “Me and her daddy will talk to her, Jolene. Now I know you got some homework to do and them chores to get to. So whyn't you go on. You bigger than her anyway—you got enough to do.”

“I know that, Mama. That's why I don't spend my time kissing boys in back of the school. You know, if you got on her more, she wouldn't be so fast.”

“I'll thank you, miss, to let me talk to her as I see fit. Ain't nobody made you the mama around here, last I checked. Now get on.”

Jolene stomped up the stairs. Mildred sighed.
I wish I liked her better
, she thought.
Must be a sin not to like your own child
. She wondered what she would say to Angie. Nothing she said seemed to work.

The door slammed, announcing Angela's arrival. She had never in her life entered a room quietly. At fourteen, she was all legs and arms and shockingly pretty. “Hi, Mama.” She threw her books down on the kitchen table.

“Put those away, child. And get upstairs and get to work on your homework.” Not yet. She wasn't ready yet. She went back to washing dishes.

 

The Edwards family sat down to dinner at 6:30 that night, as always. Johnny Lee led the prayer and then they all tucked in to their food. Otis never had much to say. At eighteen and in his senior year of high school, he was already engaged to a nice steady girl from his class and had plans to get a job out in the oil fields outside of town—they were hiring coloreds occasionally now. Things were changing. If there had been any farming left to do, it would have suited him well. But there wasn't. And he was turning into the kind of man who would happily take what he could get. Jolene took precise, fussy bites of her food, dabbing at her mouth delicately. She sat up very straight. Angie ate eagerly and talked a blue streak, until Jolene said, “Did Mama speak to you yet, Angie?”

“Speak to me about what?”

“'Bout how you actin' out back of the school.”

“What?” said Angela. Her voice went up in a nervous squeak.

Johnny Lee stepped in. “What's she talking about, Angie? Do you know, Millie?”

“It's not something I want to talk about at the table, J.L. Let's you and me and Angie talk later.”

“What'd I do?” said Angela with the indignation of the caught.

“Yeah, Mama. She didn't mind having everybody looking at her. Ain't you gonna say nothing?” Jolene again.

“In God's name, woman, what is this child talking about?”

In the face of her father's persistence, Angela suddenly changed tactics, jumping up from the table. “I was kissing a boy, OK? That's what Miss Priss here is so upset about!” Looking right at Mildred, she shouted, “It's not like you've never done it.” Then she ran from the room. Mildred and Johnny Lee didn't even look at each other. Then Johnny Lee stood up, and said, “My God, woman. My God.” He pushed roughly back from the table and walked out the front door. Otis kept eating. Jolene sat without moving; the look of terror on her face made it clear that this had gone further than she's intended, that she was on the verge of knowing things she didn't want to know. Mildred rested her head on her hands, moaning. Then she got up and went to speak to her youngest daughter.

Angie was face down on her bed, sobbing. Mildred came in but stood only just over the threshold. Somehow, she couldn't go any closer. “Angie? Angie, why are you actin' like this?”

She rolled over. “I kissed him, yeah. He asked and I kissed him. I didn't even like it that much, Mama.”