The Future Has a Past (18 page)

Another time, Fred said, “You better let that boy learn how to be a man, Vinnie. He is too old to have nothing to do! And he is planning on going to New York? With no money? But yours?”

Fred set up a small bookkeeping job for Delores, but she did very sloppy work, incorrect work, and she knew better. Just didn’t want any job. To pay her for sloppy work was not right, to Fred, she had to build better work habits for the day she would have to support herself. He gave her a two-week notice to try to improve her work, she didn’t, so he let her go.

These things weighed heavily on Vinnie and she couldn’t bring herself to blame her children, so she resented Fred instead. By this time Richard had graduated and was gone to New York seeking out his future. Vinnie was working extra. Fred and Vinnie’s time together grew less and less comfortable. And they weren’t making love anyway, so Fred told her, “Maybe you have some thinking to do about your life.”

She went back over the last argument she had had with Fred. It had started when he said, “Vinnie, you are getting older and I don’t like to see you keep up all these jobs with NO help from either one of your grown children and no life of your own with me.”

She had answered with a stiff lip, “I have a life. I have my children to think of.”

“No,” he had said, “they have you. That’s good, too. But there is none left over for yourself, much less some for me. We are missing some of the best years of our life. If we were married . . . I’d take care of you. I’ll pay college tuition as long as there are good grades and some effort to help themselves and—”

“Oh, leave me alone, Fred. I’m not goin to desert my children.”

“Vinnie, we haven’t even made love since that first time you let me hold you in my arms.”

“I don’t want any more babies.”

Fred sighed, “I have protection and, Vinnie, I’d take care of my child.”

“I don’t trust ‘protection’ and I’m afraid of pills, pills, pills.”

“Vinnie, you’re afraid of life, in some way, and your children. Vinnie, it’s good to love your children, God knows, but it would be good if they love you the same way back. Don’t you know the greatest thing is to love someone and they love you back? Like I do? It hurts me to see you deprive yourself for . . . I can’t take it much longer. It’s been two years now. Two years. Lost . . . wasted. You could die without knowing rest, peace and love. I love you. I can’t go on like this. I am a man. A grown man.”

Vinnie had gazed despairingly around her little warm living room and then at the man she loved. Her heart yearned for him and for his love and the way he had held her body. Fred was thinking of her love, also. “How could she even forget that one night? And I have found out nobody can take her place.”

Fred sighed, again, and picked up his hat, walked to her door and said, “I’m not getting any younger either and I’m not goin to let anybody steal my life from me. Especially, I won’t just give it away. I want memories . . . with you. I want a home . . . with you. I want you. And if I can’t have you, in peace . . . well, I’m not going to ask you again. And you are going to miss the best thing we could have . . . together. So . . . I’m gone, Vinnie.”

He opened the door and stood there a minute waiting for her to say something, anything. Vinnie didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything. He didn’t slam her door as he left. He just stepped out and closed it softly behind him. She listened to his steps going down the stairs; not light or joyful as before, but heavy and tired. Then his car door slammed, she heard it all the way to the middle of her heart. Her nerves and feelings screamed aloud inside her body. But, finally, she didn’t believe he was really gone for good. “He’ll come back. Please, Jesus.” That was when Vinnie’s heart began screaming outside in the rain. Again.

But . . . Fred was gone. Though she saw him, now and then, they just waved or even spoke briefly, but he didn’t come back. Almost three years passed. Every day her heart screamed, dried and withered a little more. Richard never had started college and Delores was now in her second year at college.

Through almost three years, Vinnie was sad and bereft. Her heart grieving, her body calling, her mind saying, “Shhhhhhhh.” But she thought and thought, lived and breathed Fred, Fred, Fred. And she worked, worked, worked for her children. She always looked for her eagle, but saw it less and less. It was getting old, she thought to herself.

Now Vinnie was desperately, hurting-type lonely. Sad to the bottom of her little torn soul. Her body ached with its own memory of his love. They say time flies; in truth, time can seem to go by so slow, dragging slow, as it felt to Vinnie sometime. But, also, in Vinnie’s mind, the years seemed to be fleeing from her; passing her by and taking her dreams with them. Even the possibilities seemed to be gone. Love was gone.

As she sat there this morning staring through the window at the rain, looking for the eagle, for her heart’s reasons, she could almost see her own soul, still outside moaning in the rain.

Since the ordeal with Betha, Vinnie had thought in a different way about her children. She was leaning strongly toward Fred’s suggestions, his philosophy of children, grown children.

Then when Wynona’s money had been won Vinnie thought of how everyone came to get something. Only her son had not begged. He took his gift of money and went back to his job. His job. Also, when Wynona moved to her new house, only her son had written her: “Mama, I am so glad you will be happier.” But he did not come to help. He was busy with his job. His life.

Vinnie thought to herself, again, “Everybody is busy about their own life. Everybody but me.”

Wynona was so happy the day she moved. Fred had introduced her to a few workmen who painted, tiled and repaired things in her “new” house. Eduardo, a Hispanic fellow, was going to use his truck to move her. Eduardo didn’t pass up any money because he had two children he was raising alone since his wife had died. He was an older, good-looking Latin man.

Wynona hadn’t had a man-friend since when. She thought she was too old for “romance” and things like that. At the same time, she thought, “Vinnie was a fool for lettin that Fred man go.” She even told Vinnie, “Girl, I always thought you had some sense! But, now, I don’t know. And you done told me bout that night of lovin you had with him. Chile, if I had that chanct, I’d take it . . . old and ugly as I may be.”

So she admired Eduardo and was glad he also knew how to do things around a house because, now, it was her own property and she would have to see to keeping it up to par. Eduardo helped her move by hauling the few things she had to carry over, because she was going to buy mostly new things. “All my things are mostly old, broken and tired. Like me.” She laughed as she said that to Eduardo, flirting a bit and thinking, “I hope you know you are a little old and tired, too.”

Eduardo kept coming around to check on her and to help her in all the little ways a man is necessary around a house. Came to be the time when he hauled a cord of wood for her little fireplace, then carried some in and built a fire for her which they sat in front of, and she served him a glass of wine. Sometimes she cooked a meal for him. Didn’t tell him about her money; no need to.

Another time he brought his teenage children over to meet her, a boy seventeen, Frederico, and a girl fifteen, Maria. Both were well-behaved, mannerable and sad. They missed their mother. Their mother’s parents were in Mexico and Eduardo’s father lived near, but was too old to handle two healthy youngsters and, besides, they were almost grown. Eduardo had wanted to raise them hisself. Wynona loved youngsters, still . . . But she was lonely in her new house. She had no new friends yet.

However, Wynona, with a little money and some new clothes, a fresh hairstyle, walked and thought with more assurance and self-confidence. She became more attractive; older but looking good. She was attractive to Eduardo, among a few others. Very few others, but how many do you need?

She became like a foster-mother-friend to Eduardo’s children. They loved her because of her warm personality, warm home, homemade cakes, pies and dinners. She talked to them about life, education and attitude. Just plain ole common sense. Eduardo wanted to pay her but she wouldn’t accept any money. She told him, “Just bring some groceries and I can cook a hot meal for all of you a couple of times a week, cause I may not be home every day. You are all welcome, you know, I like your little family.” She didn’t want to tie herself up in something that was not her life. She had already raised her children. Living, was on her mind now.

One day Vinnie visited her and as she was leaving said to Wynona, “Looks like you are courtin pretty steady there, girl!”

Wynona answered, “Don’t be crazy. I’m too old to be courtin!”

But Vinnie laughed at her. “It ain’t over til it’s over!”

Wynona laughed back at her. “That’s what you ought to tell yourself bout that Fred man! Why you want to keep hurtin yourself?!”

After a few weeks Josephine “happened” to come by to see Wynona’s house while Eduardo and the children were there. She made a special trip back when he wouldn’t be there. She told Wynona, “You are a fool! You just got through raising your own! These are some other woman’s kids! That man is looking for somebody to use and you just falling right on in place! And who you tryin to look good for? Girl, you better try holding on to that little piece of money you got left, if you got any left.”

Wynona retorted, “I may not be as smart as other people think they are, but I blive I know what to do about my own life!”

With all the things that had happened in Wynona’s family and still hearing Betha cursing her mother, many things ran through Vinnie’s mind when she sat in her thinking chair. She wondered more and more how her own children would be with her in her time of need. She decided to make a test: she would tell them she was sick. She picked up her phone, the same one Fred paid for, and made the calls. She had to call several numbers for Richard but was finally able to leave a message, and she left a message for Delores.

The next day Delores called and said, “Oh, Mama, if I leave school now, I’ll lose so much time. And I have an entire event to organize and it’s an honor to have been chosen to head it. Can you hold on for a month or two? Please, Mama! And don’t die! Please! See a doctor, have you seen a doctor? Call me back and let me know what he says. Okay? I got to go now, Ma, there is a line here.”

Richard called three days later, asking, “Sick? Mama, I’m in the middle of a lot of important things. Jobs, Mama, important jobs! See what Dee says and let me know. How sick are you? If you are real sick and maybe dying, oh Lord, maybe I can wait and take care of my business later. I’ll check back at this number later to see if you have been able to reach Delores and call to let me know. Call me, now, you hear?”

Vinnie put the phone receiver down slowly, slowly after these calls from her children whom she had worked so hard for, sacrificed so much for. She moved slowly, slowly to her thinking chair, eased herself down into it and cried. It felt like the pain was coming from the bottom of her feet to some sharp pitiful point in her breast. She didn’t look out of the window, she looked into her life.

She sat there as the day slowly darkened until she couldn’t have seen out of the window even if she had wanted to. It was black night outside. She was dejected, rejected, tired, sad and emotionally desperate. And in love with a man who had proposed his love to her which she had refused. She had refused his proposal, his suggestions, his shared happiness, his loving, and for these last three years had been alone. Talking only to men who worked around her. Not dating. Vinnie laughed a deep jerky laughter in ridicule of herself.

She thought of how her house was going down, steadily decaying little by little all around her. She couldn’t keep up with the house and her children’s needs too. Her clothes were nearly rags even if clean. She wore stockings with little runs, shopped at goodwill stores, ate sparingly (which kept her slim, but never full).

It had started to rain and she looked out the window at the blackness and sound of water pellets hitting the glass, thinking of having to depend on her two children and she did not believe, now, she could depend on them. She didn’t want to live with them, have them take care of her financially, but she wanted to count on them coming to see about her if she was sick.

She thought of the old mother, Ms. Foster, across the street being screamed at daily and who knows how she was fed. She thought of Wynona and her relatives who were there with the money and gone when it was gone.

Profound emotions are often silent, but they have words. She thought out loud, “I am almost forty years old now. For a dream that may never be, I am losing my chance at happiness. But, I made myself a victim. I don’t hate my children; they are still my children. But, now, I will help them and live my life too.”

Vinnie slept fitfully that night and woke up earlier than usual for her bank job. With the extra time she decided to sit right down and write her twenty-two-year-old son and her going-on-twenty-one-year-old daughter. She explained to them that they must cut down on their “wants” and get themselves part-time jobs because she would not be doing as she had done for so many years. She told them she was tired and things must change. College fees would be coming, with good grades, but “extras” would cease. “I’m going to make a life for myself and I am starting today.” She closed by sending them all her love as their mother. Vinnie signed, sealed and mailed the letters on her way to work, and of a sudden, her step was lighter and her back straighter . . . though her heart felt a bit heavy in her breast.

She continued thinking about her life all the day and Fred became more and more a part of the new life she dreamed of now. When she reached home that evening she made a cup of tea and went to sit in her thinking chair. The day had cleared of rain, leaving only a misty light fog in the air and around the trees.

She spied her eagle far off in the distance, high in the sky, only this time there was a tiny speck following the bird. As it drew closer to Vinnie’s vision she could see that it was another smaller eagle. A young version of, obviously, its mother. The mother dipped and turned a bit, slowly, so her child, the young bird, could follow her easily. The smaller bird followed its mother with quick flapping wings, fighting hard to do everything the way she did. When the young bird fell behind in its efforts, the large eagle flew back to it and dipped and glided around it until it had regained its breath and direction, then they were off on the lesson again.