JEWEL (22 page)

He smiled, bent down and touched Brenda Kay’s head, then leaned and kissed her forehead.

“My baby girl, ” he said. Without his eyes meeting mine, he stood, leaned into my neck and kissed me. Then he turned, headed off down the stairs.

There was nothing to say, and I only stood there, watching him as he took the stairs quicker than any morning in recent history.

I looked down at Brenda Kay. She was half-turned to him, watching him, too. Her eyes were open wide, her mouth open, as if this person were a stranger, someone she’d never seen before, even after five and a half years inside this house. And maybe, I thought, that’s exactly what he was to her, why she looked at him this way every time she saw him.

Then something came clear to me, and I knew what he’d already planned for our outing. And just as clear I knew, too, how I’d introduce him to the notion of California.

We were on the road east toward Ashe Lake by nine-thirty, Leston, Brenda Kay and me in the front seat, the children in the bed of the pickup. On occasion I’d glance back through the rears window to see Billie Jean with one hand holding down her hair, the other on the edge of the bed, her eyes always ahead of us, watching what was coming up next, or Wilman reaching out a fist to Burton, Burton dodging, moving just so, Wilman’s swing lost to air. Annie never moved, only huddled next to Billie Jean, her legs pulled up close to her chin, her hands holding on to her shins.

She only stared across the bed to the opposite wall, her red hair in pigtails that bounced with each dip in the road.

Leston put his arm on top of the seat back, let his fingers just touch my shoulder. He tilted his head to one side, his eyes on the road, said, “Figured we’d rent us a canoe. From that old nigger up there, Jason.” He paused. “What do you think? ” Brenda Kay started rocking forward and back right then, her hands tight together in her lap. Her mouth was open, her jaw pushed forward so that all you could see of her mouth were her bottom teeth, her chin way out.

Then she started clicking her teeth together, her jaw just barely moving, going to some rhythm only she knew about.

I touched a hand to her back, and she only kept with the slow, smooth rocking.

I said, “What about money? ” He laughed, short and clean, like he was tossing aside the whole idea of what things cost.

He said, “I got a few cents saved up.” He paused, looked at me for the first time today. “No big bankroll, ” he said, smiling. “But a few cents.”

I turned, looked to the road. My hand was still on Brenda Kay’s back, making slow circles now, never certain what it was she thought me doing by touching her, sometimes she’d be startled, turn quick as she could to give me the cold-eyed and empty stare she gave Leston each time she saw him, other times she’d turn, smile at me, her thin red lips nearly gone for the smile, the row of bottom baby teeth right there. This time she did nothing, still rocked, as though I weren’t even here.

“The children’d like that, ” I said. “We haven’t done that since before Brenda Kay was born.”

I looked at him. I wanted to see how he’d take that, my words right out in the open. We never spoke about Before, that word gone from the ones we always used, ones that usually dealt with money.

But he didn’t flinch, didn’t even move. His fingers still lay on my shoulder. His eyes were on the road, and he said, “Figured you ” and he stopped. He looked at me, one hand on the steering wheel, his elbow out his window, the air cool and dew-wet air out there. “Figured you and me, we could take a little ride ourselves.” He paused, swallowed.

“You and me.”

I took my eyes from his, looked back to Brenda Kay. She’d started in to rocking too far forward, too far back, the slow arc her body made too big for the cab, her back hitting the seat a little harder each time.

Leston took his arm from the seat top, put both hands on the wheel. He glanced at Brenda Kay, then to the road, then to her again.

I reached my other hand to Brenda Kay’s chest, tried to hold her. But she was strong, and it took me a minute or so before I could get her to stop, until she was sitting up straight again, breathing hard, cheeks flushed, her small fingers still clasped in her lap.

“With Brenda Kay, of course, ” I said then, one arm around her shoulder.

With my other hand I touched her cheek, felt her smooth skin damp with sweat.

“No, ” he said. He was smiling at me again. “Just what I said. You and me. Billie Jean can take care of her, does it often enough already.”

I knew what he wanted, there was no doubt. And he was right, Brenda Kay’d be fine with Billie Jean. Still, I had to play this out the best I could, wanted him to feel what was coming was all his idea.

I said. “Leston, are you certain? ” I tilted my head, drew up my eyebrows in a way I knew he’d believe the rest of his life.

He said, “Positive.” He let go the steering wheel with one hand, placed that hand on Brenda Kay’s head, patted it as though he’d never had any children of his own, his fingers flat and stiff, afraid to touch her.

“She’ll be fine, ” he said.

“I don’t know, ” I said, and crossed my arms to show him how worried I was, then settled back in my seat, already figuring on what I’d say once we were out on the water.

CHAPTER 14.

LESTON PARKED THE TRUCK OUT FRONT THE NIGGER JASON’s SHANTY. Not a hundred yards behind the place was Ashe Lake, his shanty looking like every other shanty I’d ever seen, clapboards weathered to nothing, a huge flat stone for a front step, smoke from a chimney.

He and Leston stood out front, Jason’s eyes on the ground before him, Leston with his hands in his blue jeans pockets and rocking ever so slowly forward and back on his heels. He looked directly at Jason, just talking to him.

I leaned out the window, hollered, “Leston, let’s get going.”

He only glanced at me, turned his head the smallest bit, then back to Jason, who, suddenly, looked too much like Tory to me, hair the same flecked gray, eyes down on the ground the same way, raggedy clothes.

The engine rumbled beneath me. Brenda Kay’d started giving in to rocking forward and back again, and the boys were standing in the bed of the truck, chucking rocks they’d gotten from somewhere off into the woods.

Then Leston pulled one hand out of a pocket, looked into his palm, held it out to Jason. Money for the canoe.

Jason lifted a hand, waved off Leston, shook his head. Still he wouldn’t look up.

But Leston wouldn’t let it pass at that, instead stood with his hand and the money out.

“Momma! ” Brenda Kay screamed then, my name choked off in her throat, high-pitched and piercing, making me jump at it. She was going full tilt again, her head almost smashing into the scratched green metal of the dash as she swung forward, the back of her head hitting the seat as she slammed backward.

I took hold of her, and for a few moments I, too, was swinging with her, lost for an instant in the cold rhythm she carried through her body, made her move as hard as she did, and I held her even tighter, afraid I might lose control, though I already had. Her getting to this moment, this abandon, was my fault, me watching what was happening out the window instead of what was going on in my child right next to me.

I . w o Because that was what being her mother was about, watching, every second, waiting and watching and waiting. Every moment, every breath of my life was taken up with care for her, and how best to keep control of her life, then my children’s lives, and, finally, my husband’s. When Brenda Kay screamed, when she pulled a chair over on herself, when she wet her underdrawers, when she crawled too close to the fireplace, when she banged her chin on a kitchen drawer she pulled out too fast, when she threw up, when she had a hair in her eye, when she found a sharpened pencil, when she slept, when she ate, when she drank and breathe and breathe , I was protecting her, stopping her, carrying her, helping her.

That was who I was, and as I struggled yet again to slow her down, to stop this wild movement she’d done this more and more of late, the movement what Dr. Basket’d informed me was merely her own way of learning to coordinate her muscles, her body trying to take charge over itself as she grew older I wondered when this all would stop, or if it would, or if I really hoped it would never stop at all. This purpose, this mission I had now was the giant center of everything I did, and I thought again of what I was here to do, what that canoe meant to me and what it meant to Leston, and how it was Brenda Kay and her welfare, her life, I was after fixing.

I had her tight in my arms, had her stopped, finally, the both of us breathing hard this time, my eyes closed with the effort.

When I opened them, there out front of the shanty stood Leston and Jason, Leston’s hand and the money still held out to him. But Leston was turned to us. The morning light played across his face to make even deeper the wrinkles of his forehead, even more severe the lines beside his eyes as he strained to see what exactly was going on in the cab of his truck.

I glanced over my shoulder and out the rear window. Billie Jean was staring in at us, Wilman standing up and with his arm cocked back and ready to throw the rock in his hand, Burton standing with his hands in his pockets. Only Annie wasn’t looking, simply stared off into the woods.

I turned to the front window, hollered, “We’re fine, Leston. Let’s just get on.”

He turned back to Jason, reached to Jason’s shirt pocket, dropped the few bits of change in.

Jason nodded a quick couple of times, pointed off to his left, all without looking up. Then Leston looked back to the truck, snapped his fingers once and pointed to where Jason had.

The boys jumped out of the bed and disappeared around the back of the shanty. A minute later, here they came, the scarred and dull blue canoe they carried hiding their heads.

I looked down at Brenda Kay, my arms still around her shoulders, and marveled at how strong she could be, the power in her muscle and bone.

And I wondered what she saw as the boys came nearer the truck, the canoe upside down and on their heads. But her eyes were filled with the same empty thickness they always were, only staring, my baby quiet and still.

Leston slowly drove the truck down a two-track dirt road, the center of it high with weeds that disappeared from before the hood as we moved over them, vines and branches off magnolias and low pines and water oak all coming down from above. I’d looked again out the rear window, saw the boys, one on each side of the canoe and with a hand holding tight to an edge, the other hand pushing back the branches.

We parked at the end of the road, and let the boys take the canoe out first, watched from shore as they made like Red Indians, warwhooping and screaming, the two of them working the paddles in good time, disappearing to the north where the lake bent and wandered off. The only thing left of them was the slice of empty water where’d been a thick carpet of lily pads before they’d launched, and the sound every once in a while of their yells carried across the water to us.

They were getting on now, it hit me as the last of their hollering came to me. Burton was already fifteen, Wilman thirteen, though he had a few pounds on his older brother, stood only an inch or so shorter.

Billie Jean was already nineteen, Annie nine, and as Billie Jean and I spread out the old red wool blanket we’d always used just for picnics like this one, these sorts of occasions commonplace before Brenda Kay’d come along, I wondered what had happened to that time. But I knew even before my next breath that the answer was right in front of me, already crawling across the blanket, bringing on the soles of her heavy white shoes sand and grass and mud, my five and-a-half-year-old infant.

“Brenda Kay, ” I said, and she looked up at me, first the empty eyes, then the smile. She was on her hands and knees, but lifted a hand up, fingers spread wide. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to wave at me, or if the move was something she’d had no choice over, only her body doing more of what the doctor in New Orleans said she’d do. There was no way to tell.

Once I’d gotten her sitting up and brushed off as best I could, and after I’d given Annie the job of going back to the truck for the food and Billie Jean the task of seeing if she couldn’t head up the lake aways, call the boys back in, I sat on the blanket. Brenda Kay was in front of me, trying again to clap her hands. She made sounds all the while, the same sounds she always made, open-mouthe hums that wandered all over, up and down, soft to loud to soft again. I put my arms around her from behind, pulled her close to me, and held her hands with mine, clapped with her to my own rhythm, something we did every day. I thought there might be in the words I sang and in the feel of my arms around her a healing power, love, like I’d said to Leston in the cab of the truck on the way home from New Orleans that first time, was the biggest power we could any of us give her. I sang in her ear the first verse to “Love Lifted Me, ” a song that seemed to calm her down, and that made her hum all the more. I couldn’t help but think of her humming as her own trying to sing with me, more evidence we were on the road to some recovery from the blow we’d been getting these five and a half years.

“Listen, ” I said out loud to Leston, who leaned back on his elbows beneath the live oak we’d laid the blanket under. He had his feet crossed at the ankles, his eyes on the lake. His eyes creased closed with the smoke off the cigarette at his lips. He reached up with one hand, took out the cigarette, shot out smoke. He looked at us.

“Love lifted me, ” I sang quietly, clapping Brenda Kay’s hands together as I did, “love lifted me, when nothing else would help, love lifted me.”

Brenda Kay hummed and hummed along, now and again moving her mouth in some way that changed the sounds she gave out, made them near-words, all of them choked and stiff, but sounds all the same.

Leston smiled, looked back to the lake. He put the cigarette to his lips, leaned back on both elbows again. He said, “Ought to put you both in the church choir, ” and looked at me.

I smiled at him, hoping he’d see the joy his baby daughter was capable of, the happiness she held in her heart, the two of us clapping away to words that meant nothing to her, me smiling away at her own words, ones I knew I’d never understand, either.