Betsey Brown (21 page)

Carrie and Betsey suddenly stopped their conversation. Jane was coming down the front stairway with Sharon and Margot saying: “That's all you need to know right now.”

Sharon jumped two steps to confront her mother. “But how do I get a baby?”

Jane was so exasperated she turned beet red and with a straight face blurted, “Just keep those panties up, you hear?”

In the late afternoon Vida took to her room, where she rocked by the window not unlike the limbs of the trees she watched so carefully. This is not where her beloved Frank would have left her, but the quiet sway of the branches offered a solace, a soothing of her soul. No children to run behind, no daughter to assuage, in her own room with the breezes and her rocking chair, Vida let the day slip away and gathered her memories that always left a fleeting smile and a slight blush to her cheeks. There was a music to her daydreams that she sang with the wind.

Humming to herself, Jane brushed her hair by her vanity. She couldn't hold back the smile that kept creeping to her lips. She had impulses to giggle or chuckle incessantly. She'd look at Greer exhausted on their bed, one arm hanging from the mattress, the other reaching out to where she might have been, but wasn't. Regally sweeping strokes of auburn whisked from
one side of her face to the other. Jane had had such fun. What a great idea that had been to get home before the children and make Paris come alive in their bedroom. She hadn't let him touch her until she'd managed to find her only true lace negligee, then she'd insisted on champagne and liverwurst. Jane did not like caviar. Plus, they didn't have any. Yet liverwurst and champagne with the last scents of afternoon were all they needed to beguine, begin a reeling and a rocking. Jane slid off the bed twice, once gliding down her back to the carpet, the other time wrestling the sheets from her neck while she balanced herself on her head. Her hair fell like a fan around Greer's fingers. Pulling each other up, the champagne spilled across Jane's thighs. With great unladylike élan Jane sipped the bubbles from the bottle til Greer grabbed it from her and kissed the Mumm's from her lips.

“Why don't we do this more often?” Jane chirped from her seat by the mirror. She'd started trying on jewelry and her naked body. Maybe that would be her next flight of fancy: she'd seduce Greer in the nude with jewelry and perfume. That was a good idea. Greer sighed, seemingly weighed down with unseen boulders and chains. He could barely speak, but he tried his damnedest: “If you'd stayed at home, we could have.”

Jane stopped brushing her hair. That was not a good idea. She didn't want to discuss her vacation, as she called it. “Greer, I'm not going anywhere, really.” Jane delicately approached her husband, who was nearly falling off the bed. “I think we can work things out.” Greer pulled Jane's mouth to his. Maybe they would never get up.

After school everybody had some chore to do, Carrie'd seen to that.

“Margot, go clean them collards and be sure to pick out all the worms. Allard, get the dust broom and start on the back staircase third floor.”

Allard pouted, “All the way down from the third floor, Carrie?”

“Yep, that's what I said.”

“Sharon, you go right behind Allard with the wax and get them hard-to-clean lil spaces on the banisters, ya hear? Charlie, you go on upstairs and wash them blinds, then turn em so the furniture don't pale in the sun. Get on now. Betsey, stand on this table and clean them crystals on the chandelier and if any one of em breaks, your behind is gonna be hurtin for mo' than a few days.”

The telephone rang and Betsey went to answer it. Carrie, majestic in the center of the kitchen, listened to the chant of the children: “Good Morning, Brown Residence. Good Afternoon, Brown Residence. Good Evening, Brown Residence.” Oh how those proper voices warmed her southern soul.

“See now y'all sound like ya got some sense. Sharon, go help Margot starch them clothes and while they hanging outside for a bit of repose, carry that silver on withcha. Get it to shinin the way your mama like it to do. Tarnish aint nothing to take pride in, I'll say that. Get on now, busy your selves fore your folks get home.”

Carrie heard Mr. Jeff's regular gait coming up the back porch. She ran her hands through her hair quickly, tugged her apron straight, and gleamed a bit as she let him through the door.

“Why Miss Carrie, I didn't realize you had some free time on your hands. Now isn't that God's way of letting you know you doin the right thing.”

With that Mr. Jeff handed Carrie a lovely bouquet of gardenias and azaleas. Carrie set off for one of Mrs. Brown's crystal cases, after pouring a sip of Jack Daniels for herself and her guest, the handsome Mr. Jeff.

“Now, Miss Carrie, it certainly is gracious of you to offer me a spot to drink, but on this very day I've brought you some of my own blackberry wine made up just how my mama usedta do in Mississippi. Would you care for a lil?”

Carrie went to the pantry and found two of Mrs. Brown's wineglasses she swore were from France and irreplaceable, so she and Mr. Jeff could enjoy their visit leisurely, as well as with some style. Mr. Jeff's conversations had mostly to do with the change in the Brown children since she'd come.

“Why they were just hellions fore you got here, Miss Carrie. Couldn't nobody talk to em or make em mind. Once I thought I was gonna give that Charlie from up north a good licking for pulling up all the begonias in the Wilsons' yard. I surely did have an inclination to do harm to that boy. If it wasn't for Dr. Brown, I probably would have. But Dr. Brown's sucha hardworking man and he supports the race. I like that in a man, supporting the race.”

“I like that in a man, myself,” cooed Carrie, feeling the warmth of the whiskey and the sweet blackberry winding through her limbs. “Oh Mr. Jeff, all they needed was some things to do. To find out about themselves. How hard they could work. And what's more, I let em find out on they own. Everybody got they own way, that's what I say. Now they believe they gettin grown and that's all chirren dream of, bein big, bein in charge, being responsible for they chores and they behavior. Yeah, I'm growin me some chirren with some sense.”

While Mr. Jeff and Carrie enjoyed their tête-à-tête, the
house was reeling with the children shouting back and forth across rooms and up and down stairways.

“Allard, if you don't dust good, my wax don't work,” Sharon coaxed.

“Awright, awright. I'ma come back and do it tomorrow.”

“No, you gonna do this today. I gotta do my job right.”

The Brown children had made up a song to one of the tunes Allard whistled that went like this:

this is our house/   this is our house

we keep it shinin/   spankin clean

if some white folks ever see it

they'll think they musta done it

but it's us colored kids that run it

this is ours

“Hey, Allard, what you call these streaks on here? Some kinda design?”

“Aw Charlie, it just won't come clean.”

“You want me to kick your behind?”

“UMMMMMH, Sharon, you should taste this starch. It's so good.”

“Get that mess out of your mouth and in the clothes like you know you should!”

this is our house/   this is our house

we keep it shinin/   spankin clean

we aint workin for no crackers

no rich po' white trash

we doin this in our house

cause we gonna make it last.

“You know what?” Betsey asked anybody. “You know what, the neighborhood aint falling down, not unless I do, cause white folks can't clean nothin right.”

“Least not quite like we do,” Charlie answered.

“I'm done. I'm done,” shrieked Allard. “Somebody wanta race down the street free-handed?”

But the rest of the children were still busy with their chores, singing:

this is our house/   this is our house

keepin it oooh       just so

keepin it oooh       just so

Carrie come see/      Carrie come see

keepin it ooh just so

keepin it ooh just so

Carrie snuggled for a minute with Mr. Jeff while looking at her bouquet she'd better take to her room before Mrs. Brown came. Then she took a tour of the house with everyone except Allard, while they showed their handiwork.

“Y'all done a mighty fine job, yep, a mighty fine job. And we gonna have some chicken and dumplings tonight. Y'all deserve it. A mighty fine job, if I do say so myself.”

So when Carrie didn't come one Monday morning Betsey figured she would cover for her. She could have done a good job too, cept that Mama and Grandma kept asking her where was Carrie and wouldn't let her do any of the stuff Carrie had taught her to do, which wasn't the way they did everything. So Betsey shouted back at them and got in a terrible argument about being out of her mind as well as an impudence and not showing any respect for her elders.

Just as Betsey was moving the glasses outta the dishwasher to pour juice for the family, Allard tripped on his shoelaces and all the glasses shattered cross the floor. Vida held her heart.

Everything went haywire. Betsey was sweeping up the glass as fast as she could. Allard was still trying to tie his shoes. Sharon was combing her hair in the kitchen, which everyone knew was low-class in the first place. Margot was making sandwiches like a robot. Charlie was just grabbing things out of the refrigerator. Jane was holding on to the sideboard for dear life itself. Greer was reading the morning paper while drinking his coffee. He only liked Kenyan or Guatemalan coffee with three sugars. He was sucha Latin.

“Lord, Lord, please be careful. I do declare, where's that crazy Carrie?”

“Carrie aint crazy, Grandma, she's just not here yet,” Sharon calmly explained.

“Well, it doesn't matter if she's crazy or not, ordinarily, but she must be crazy not to come to work today.” Jane's tolerance was getting very very short.

“She's comin, Aunt Jane, don't worry,” Charlie assured her.

Vida was hovering over everything.

“Please be careful. All this glass. That wasn't your wedding crystal from Aunt Ethel was it, Jane?”

Sharon and Margot were practicing the new Tina Turner song bout bein a fool in love. That did it. Jane went right out.

“No, Mama, it wasn't the crystal from Aunt Ethel. Girls, stop singing that trash first thing in the morning! Everybody please just be quiet! I can't stand all this noise. Greer, would you please do something?”

At that moment the telephone rang and Greer answered it.

“Jane, darling, it's for you.”

Jane tried to calm herself.

“Hello, this is Mrs. Brown, may I help you? . . . Carrie?”

Everyone in the kitchen froze at the mention of Carrie's name.

“Well Carrie, where are you? You're supposed to be here. Where are you?”

Betsey whispered to Sharon that Carrie must be going round the bush to her mother.

Jane looked ill.

“Jail?”

“Jail?” the household uttered in unison.

“Well, why?” Jane went on. “Cause you had to cut a friend of yours?”

“Uh oh.” The children grimaced.

“Cause you had to cut a friend of yours!”

“That's not so good,” Greer looked up from his paper to say to whoever might be listening. The children were hushed but disquieted bout this turn of events.

“Carrie, you best come round here, when you get out from down there, and carry all of your mess right out of this house.”

The children groaned.

“Oh, nooooo, Mama, please, no.”

“Get your last check and pay your last respects to Mr. Jeff and whoever else you've been entertaining in my house. You know good and well I can't have a criminal looking after my children!”

Jane turned from the telephone quite her personable self.

“All right, children, off to school with you.”

There was an eerie edge to the voices of the children as they filed by for their morning hugs and kisses. Jane sat down to breakfast with her beloved husband. Vida escaped to her rocking chair and sang “My Buddy,” thinking on Frank.

Late afternoon came across sooner than usual or maybe it was the sadness Betsey was experiencing in her every sinew. Carrie must have come while they were at school. When Betsey got home all Carrie's things were gone, but she found some of the rope Carrie usedta tie around her waist by the latrine in the cellar.

Her sisters and the boys didn't even realize what had happened. Their losing Carrie and all.

Betsey never mentioned her feelings to her mama cause then Jane would just remind her that she always picked the most niggerish people in the world to make her friends. And she would list Mavis, Charlotte Ann, and Linda Susan who really was just po' white trash. So Betsey didn't say anything.

Betsey just took Carrie's place in the house. Did everything like she would have done except she did use the regular bathrooms. And Betsey prayed for Carrie the way Carrie'd prayed for the one of her chirren most dead.