And Do Remember Me (21 page)

T
HE PLAY HAD
ended at ten-thirty and Pearl had fled immediately to her dressing room where she had locked the door and sat before the dressing table shivering with remorse and grief. She had chosen to go on, to perform, despite the call from her mother two hours before the curtain went up—the call that informed Pearl her father was dead.

Pearl usually used the period just before going on stage to rest, or to read something unrelated to the play. Sometimes she meditated. But no matter how she chose to use them, those hours were considered sacred.

The call lasted no more than five minutes. Her mother told her she could come home now, that the funeral would be Monday afternoon, that her father had died peacefully. Pearl promised she would come for the funeral, promised to leave Sunday night from Washington.

She had not once considered not going on, had told no one about the call. She was a professional and had performed her role without a hitch.

The party to celebrate the end of the tour was in full swing when she arrived at Macon’s house.

“So they’ll get off with a slap on the wrist, and a mandatory class in Race Relations 101,” Pearl heard Macon say, as she neared the fireplace where Macon stood with Noble and Hilton Butler. Noble Carson’s arm possessively circled Macon’s waist, and he was nursing a drink in his other hand.

“I wouldn’t call it a slap on the wrist,” Hilton protested, shifting uncomfortably. “The group will have all activities suspended for the rest of the year. And why would you demean a course you recommended we create?”

“Hilton, they didn’t just ransack an office. They destroyed the trust those students had in the university, its ability to speak for and protect them.”

“I agree. How can I deny what you’re saying? But there’s only so much we can do. The president’s office isn’t a prosecutorial body and this order came straight from him.”

“Macon thinks the university is special,” Noble said, hugging her affectionately. “Like a black kid should have a greater chance of being struck by lightning than being called nigger on the average campus.”

Macon spotted Pearl and pulled her close, disengaging herself from Noble’s hold and hugging her friend. Then she introduced Pearl to Hilton. Noble, who’d met Pearl earlier, kissed her lightly on the cheek, saying, “You sure we can’t get that play extended again?”

“I love D.C., the audiences are great. But, Noble, I’m ready to go home,” Pearl sighed.

Several people surrounded Pearl, complimenting her on her performance. She stood in their midst, a smile on her face, her hands clammy and cold, and answered their questions as though walking through a dream. Behind her Noble and Macon were engaged in a vigorous, though friendly disagreement with Hilton. Pearl saw Edwin enter the room and he waved to her. She smiled at him, hoping he would rescue her.

Edwin expertly waded through the crowd and reached for Pearl’s hand, apologizing as he claimed her.

“This is my leading lady, folks,” he laughed gently. “We have to say our good-byes.”

As they danced, Edwin told Pearl, “I’ll miss you.” Then he looked at her closer and said, “Damn, I know I’m good but those tears aren’t for me are they?”

In response, Pearl buried her head in his chest. The hours spent in his bed or hers after making love, talking about the progress of their careers, cast members, best and worst experiences on the road, had meant so much. Edwin, whose fierce talent, keen features and tawny complexion had kept him modeling and then acting since he was eight, gave her advice as they lay wrapped in the sheets switching channels on the room’s huge TV, ordering room service.

“You’re an actor,” he told her, “but don’t think like one. Set up some kind of retirement plan.” He told her how to invest her money the next time she got a windfall. “You won’t always be young and pretty,” he joked. “Act like that day is a month away
instead of more years than you can imagine. Get some other kind of skill, anything so you’ll be prepared for the day when black actresses who look and sound like you aren’t in style anymore.”

They had begun flirting in Chicago, had become lovers in Boston, had fought in Baltimore and had made up in Washington.

“I’ll miss you too,” she told him, thinking only of her father.

“I don’t know what’s wrong, Pearl, but whatever it is, it’s not tougher than you are. You want me to take you back to the hotel?” He felt her trembling in his arms.

“No, Edwin, I’m okay. Really, I’m fine,” she said, grateful the song was now over. Edwin hugged her one last time and when she turned to walk away from him she bumped into Macon.

For the first time that evening Macon looked closely at Pearl and she knew something was wrong. Reaching for Pearl’s hand she led her upstairs to her bedroom. Closing the door, watching Pearl slump heavily onto the bed, Macon asked, “When did he die?”

Since Pearl had told her about her father’s stroke, Macon had watched the changes in her, the tenseness, the anxiety. What had informed her so certainly of what had happened was the absence of all this in Pearl’s demeanor. Sullen, sad resignation had replaced the anguish.

“Earlier today. I got the call from my mother before I went on.”

“And the funeral?”

“It’s Monday.”

“You’re going, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I’m going. You know, after I hung up with her, I went to the mirror in the bathroom and I looked at my face and I saw how much I look like him. Macon, I look just like him.”

“Pearl, I don’t know what to say.”

“You know, I always thought it was from him that I got my love of acting.” This thought suddenly seemed too much for Pearl and she rose from the bed and walked over to the window. “When he was in a good mood at night, before we all went to bed, he’d sometimes tell us stories.” An icy, bewildered smile suddenly appeared on her face. “Brer Rabbit and those kinds of stories. He’d be five, six different characters. He could change voices, expressions, everything. We all loved him so much then. When he was pretending to be somebody else.” Pearl stopped. Then to Macon’s amazement, she went on. “And he loved taking us to the movies with him and we’d sit up in the balcony in the dark. I think I got my drinking from him too,” she said, her voice trailing off into a bitter whisper. “Most times he was drunk when he bothered me. When I got older, he’d make me drink with him, before it happened.”

“Pearl, you don’t have to go on, not if you don’t want to,” Macon cautioned.

“I told you what he did, but I never told you how it started,” Pearl said, turning from the window to face Macon.

“The first time I was twelve and Mama was away. A relative nearby was sick and she’d gone to tend to them. I remember him coming in the room in the dark and waking me up. I remember his hands, his breath, his voice, as he hustled me out of bed. By that time he and Mama didn’t sleep together much. He slept, most nights, on a small cot in the living room. When it started I just closed my eyes and pretended I was dreaming. I felt so small laying beside him. So small. And he said, ‘Just touch it one time, Jessie,’ he said. ‘It won’t hurt and it’ll make Daddy feel real good. Since your mama ain’t here.’ I knew I shouldn’t do it. I was scared what Mama would say and I put my hands under my back. He grabbed my hand and forced me to touch it. Like he was pulling my arm out of the socket. It felt wet and clammy and cold. And for some reason I thought at
that moment about all the dead people I’d ever seen. Touching it made me feel the same way I felt when I looked at somebody dead. Then he put it between my legs and I could feel it inside me and nothing had ever hurt me so much. It’s like I could feel it in every part of my body, and it’s like it was pushing everything that was in me out of me. Nothing ever hurt me so bad. Not before or since. I tried to scream, but he covered my mouth with his hand.”

Taking a deep breath, Pearl rushed on. “He made me wash up good afterward and told me not to tell anybody or he’d hurt me worse. He kept it up, even when Mama was there.” She told Macon this, closing her eyes tightly, shaking her head as if she could not believe her own story. “The worse it got, the more Mama stayed out of his way, pretending not to know. And when I’d try to tell her, she wouldn’t listen. That’s when I started hating her, maybe even more than I hated him. And to this day, I don’t know why I never got pregnant. The only explanation I can think of is that there is a God somewhere.”

“Do you want me to go with you?” Macon asked, walking across the room, her arms open to Pearl.

“No, Macon. I have to do this alone.”

S
HE TOLD HERSELF
she would not cry. Not for her father. Yet standing beside his casket, looking at his face—a placid, seamless mask in death—Pearl did cry. Love and hate had merged, reshaping memory with a finally perfect hand.

The house on Davis Road had been torn down long ago. Mae Ann’s husband Tyrone had helped to purchase a new house for Chester and Olive Foster. But the new house, like the old one, was a haven for secrets. It was in the kitchen of this house that Chester Foster’s children sat unearthing the past he had bequeathed. Their inheritance was as substantive as an illusion, as damning as a fingerprint.

In the years after Pearl left home, Chester Foster was one of the first blacks hired by the Columbus police force. Leaving his job as janitor behind, he studied for and gained his GED. He served on the force for nearly twenty years before his health was racked by repeated and serious illnesses. Once in uniform, he gained a reputation as the cop who could keep blacks in line.

Earlier that day the living room had been filled with police officers, stern-faced, officious, offering condolences to Olive Foster. The sight of the police officers entering the living room in a small but obtrusive phalanx, hushing conversation, made Pearl shiver. They’ve come years too late, she thought, years too late.

N
OW THE HOUSE
was quiet. The guests had left and Olive Foster had retreated to her room. Pearl sat across from her brother Willie, his bearded face a volatile map of competing emotions, his eyes fearsome shining sparks.

Pearl had told him, hugging him on Mae Ann’s porch the day before he left for Viet Nam, “Come back, Willie, please come back.”

He had returned, but with stubborn accusing voices lodged in his head, with flashbacks that transported him to hell in seconds. He had left a leg and a more substantial part of himself in some jungle he could no longer name.

In the end Willie had conquered the flashbacks, sealed himself against the voices and found steady work. It only took fifteen years. Pearl had clung to Willie all that day—at the cemetery, in the hearse, in their mother’s house—holding onto him as he whispered stories about his visions in her ear, translated the curses the voices rained upon him, told her how he had found a way to heal. They had sat apart from the others on the front porch as Willie showed her the carvings he had begun to make once again. Sitting on the porch at dusk, Willie had held a beautifully carved eagle in his palms.

“For a long time when I came back,” he told Pearl, “these
animals kept me from turning the knife on myself.” A shop in Jackson had begun to sell his carvings and Willie was hoping to be able to devote more time to producing them.

Now, at the kitchen table, Willie told Pearl, “When I came back from Nam and told Daddy about the voices I was hearing, the funny thing was he understood. He was about the only one who didn’t say I was crazy.”

“What was he like at the end?” Pearl asked, longing but afraid to hear the answer, not daring even to look at Willie this time.

“He never said he was sorry,” Willie laughed. “He changed but he was still the same. When that paralysis got to him real bad and he couldn’t get around so good, or use his hands, he didn’t have nothing to do but think, and I know he started seeing things different. It wasn’t anything he said. But I could feel it in him. I’d come by the house, all crazy and feeling lost, sometimes not knowing what I was gonna do or was capable of doing the next second and I’d sit down and he’d tell me about the things he saw when he was in the Navy during World War II. He was a cook but he was close enough to war to get a smell of how awful it was.”

“Did he ever talk about me?”

“All the time. One day, I’ll never forget, we were watching television and we saw you doing a commercial for some kind of aspirin, or painkiller, and he near about fell off the sofa. He started calling Mama to come and see but by the time she came in the room you were gone from the screen. Couldn’t nobody get a word out of him the rest of the day. He started watching TV from the moment it came on in the morning until it went off at night, just looking for a sight of you.”

“I don’t know why or how but I loved him,” Pearl whispered.

“He was your daddy. He was your blood. Nothing you could do about it.”

“Can you believe it? He’s the only man I ever did love. And what he did kept me all these years from loving anybody else.”

S
HE HAD PROMISED
not to cry, and swore never to forgive her mother. But when Willie and Mae Ann left, Pearl climbed the stairs to her mother’s bedroom. She knocked on the door and heard her mother’s voice inviting her in. Olive switched on the lamp beside her bed, and turned on her side to face Pearl. She patted a spot on the bed, inviting Pearl to sit beside her. A rotund, silver-haired woman quivering with energy, Olive Foster said gently, “Come here, Jessie, come here and tell me everything.”

“Oh, Mama,” Pearl whispered, “he’s dead. And I don’t feel one bit better.”

Olive reached for her daughter, and held her as Pearl had not allowed her to do since her arrival that morning. Pearl had greeted her mother stiff with anger and grief, and the determination to hold Olive accountable blazed in her eyes. Now Olive felt her daughter’s weary body grow pliable and suddenly surrender in her arms.

She would not talk to her this time about God. She would not ask her to forgive. For in the days since her husband’s death, she had found herself unable to pray. Chester Foster was dead. And suddenly the idiom, the syntax of salvation, was erased from her tongue. She had to find her daughter. Then God would inspire her once again. But tonight she wouldn’t put God between them, she’d reach out to Jessie with nothing but the truth.