The Sleeping Night (12 page)

“Angel, I have to tell you that you won’t be teaching your Sunday School class anymore.”

“What?”

“The board voted last night to find another teacher for the six to nines. There some feeling that you might be .
 . . morally delinquent.” His nostrils flared. “I fought it, Angel, but I’m a new preacher and ain’t got a lot of political influence around here.”

Dumbstruck, Angel stared at him. “I can’t believe it. I’ve been teaching Sunday school since I was seventeen years old. And I’m a good teacher! The children like me!”

“I know.” He squeezed her arm. “I’m so sorry, Angel.”

A red fury surged up through her throat, blurring her vision with a bloody cloud. “Lord knows I’ll certainly corrupt those children,” she said bitterly.

Tears of anger pricked her eyes as she whirled away from him. As she marched back up the aisle between the tables with their folding chairs, the murmuring voices quieted. Angel ignored them and headed straight for Georgia.

At the table’s edge, she quivered uncontrollably for a long moment before she could speak, fighting the tears, fighting to hold control of her voice so that it would not quaver.

When she managed her words, they were low and flat and cold. “You knew,” she said. “And you had the gall to come down there and get me this morning like you loved me.”

Georgia tugged her sweater over her bosom, her mouth pinched closed.

Angel leaned over the table. “You knew that class was the most important thing in my life right now and you didn’t even try to stop them, did you?”

Georgia, lips grey around the edges, tried to argue. “Honey, I thought maybe it would bring you to your senses.”

“Don’t even talk to me anymore. And as far as I’m concerned, you’re dead from this moment on.” She spun away, holding her head up as she made her way to the door.

“Suit yourself, girl,” Georgia called behind her. “You gonna die crazy Just like your daddy.”

Angel left the church in the pouring rain. No one followed her and she didn’t look back.

Isaiah had read
long into the night, and picked up the book Angel had loaned him in the silence of Sunday morning at home, his mother and sister out to church no matter what the weather. He never went, figuring God knew where he was and how he felt.

Around one, he finished reading and set the book aside, feeling restless, and paced out to the porch to stare at the rain. In the back of his mind was the long, long winter crossing France and into Germany. The cold. The damp. The endless gray skies.

Truth be told, he was bored.

It would be hours before anybody got out of church and he’d been warned to keep his hands off the roast his mama had put in the pot before she left. He wondered how the roof of the Corey store was holding up against the rain and played with the notion of going over to check. He could take back the library book while he was at it, so it wouldn’t be late.

Exhaling, he shook his head. Excuses. Every bit of it.

He’d known it would be hard to put up the walls between them again after the long exchange of letters. It was one of the reasons he hadn’t planned on coming home at all. No point to it.

This morning, he’d awakened with the sense of her folded into the crooks of his elbows and the palms of his hands. For fifteen years, maybe twenty, he’d kept himself in check, building between them a wall of books and plans and women who eased his physical hungers.

At sixteen, now, he’d believed it might be possible to die of love. Every glimpse of her, every word she spoke to him, was a torture, pleasure and agony. His crazed longing gave him vivid dreams, even more vividly detailed daydreams.

He hadn’t died. But his friendship with Solomon deteriorated and fell away, a childhood fruit gone to rot. He avoided the store, kept to himself and lower Gideon where Angel would not venture. And when the Germans invaded Poland, he escaped into the Army.

At seven, Isaiah had told his father he intended to marry Angel Corey. Jordan had stopped dead in the middle of the bridge and knelt down to stare in his son’s eyes. He gripped Isaiah’s arms so hard there had been bruises the next day. “No, you ain’t, boy. Don’t you ever say it again.
Ever.
Hear?”

Terrified, Isaiah had nodded. For two weeks, he was forbidden to go to the store. But he’d never gained a lick of sense where Angel was concerned. Didn’t have any now. Fact was, he couldn’t let her drown in that store all by herself the way she had last time.

He found an umbrella and stuck her library book under his shirt, then gave himself over to the simple pleasure of walking in the rain on the deserted road. Down the road to the bridge, over the rushing water, back up toward Gideon proper.

As he came up the road toward the store, he saw Angel. Never had she looked more pitiful. He paused, marshaling himself. She stood in front of the store, muddy to her knees. Her Sunday dress was stuck to her legs and her shoes were in her hand, saved from the mud but ruined from the rain all the same. Rain dripped in rivulets from the ends of her hair and ran down her nose.

Something terrible had happened, he thought. “Angel,” he said gently, holding the umbrella over her. “What are you doing, girl?”

She swiveled her face around to him and the stillness he had thought to be some kind of pitiable defeat showed instead to be a clear and burning fury. With an expression of great disdain, she lifted her chin at the porch.

Isaiah looked. In red paint on the floor of the porch, someone had scrawled “Nigger lover” in letters two feet high. A chill touched him.

With an animal cry of rage, Angel threw her ruined shoes down the road toward town. In stocking feet she climbed the steps and carefully leapt over the letters to go inside.

In a moment, she reappeared with a bucket and a scrub brush, then fell to her knees to scrub the N away.

Isaiah climbed up beside her. Taking a second rag, he began at the opposite end to wash the letters away. The paint had not dried except in spots, but in the weathered floorboards it left behind a ghost image, pale but discernible.

Angel didn’t speak until she had washed the first three letters off as well as she could. By then, her hands and arms were stained with the red paint, but her fury seemed to have vented itself somewhat in the scrubbing. When she spoke, her tone was almost conversational.

“They took my Sunday School class away from me this morning.”

He rocked back up on his heels. Waited.

She dipped her brush and started on the second G. “I’ve had that class for six years. Before that, I taught the fours and fives.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” She bent her head over the next letter. “But I’ll be damned if they’ll beat me. They’ve underestimated me all of my life. They won’t anymore.”

Underestimated. Isaiah thought about that as she put her weight behind the cloth in her hand, rubbing with her soap-reddened hands. It stung a little, that word. He remembered the letters he’d written and never sent.

“Damn them! I’m good with those children. They deserve to have me!” She stood and kicked the bucket hard with the side of her foot, sending water spewing out into the grayness beyond the porch.

She slammed inside. Isaiah glanced at the spilled bucket. He dropped his cloth and followed her. “You swore,” he said. “Twice. I’ve never heard you swear in my life.”

Slumping forward on the counter, she said, “I never had so much call to swear before this.”

There was sound of weeping in her voice and he crossed the room to stand beside the counter. Her wet hair fell over her hands and face, and her shoulder blades stuck up in sharp relief on her back. “Don’t cry,” he said, helplessly.

“I’m not crying.” She straightened and faced him, pushing tendrils of wet hair from her face. “I’m just tired. Disappointed in everybody. They’re treating me like a harlot.”

Her face was washed clean by the rain, and age showed a little at the corners of her eyes. A lock of wet hair stuck up over her forehead, and he wanted to push it down, but instead he said, “They just wish you were a harlot, Angel. Make it easier for their consciences. If you’re a good woman, they’d have to think about what that means.”

She looked at him for a long moment. “Thank you.” She shivered suddenly. “I’m going to put on some dry clothes and then make some coffee. You want a dry shirt?”

“No, uh, I .
 . . just came to check on the roof and bring you back your book.” He put it on the counter and backed away. “I guess I better be getting back.”

“No sense going in the pouring rain.” She bustled out from behind the counter as if it didn’t matter, but he knew she was lonely. Lonelier than he was by far. “Might as well stay and have a cup of coffee since you’re here. Store is closed today, and nobody is going to be out in this rain, anyhow.”

He frowned briefly, glanced over his shoulder as if someone was looking. Gave a nod. “I’ll wait in the kitchen.”

“Fine. Won’t take me but a minute.”

Happy Howllllaween! 1943

Dear Isaiah,

We’re right in the midst of the big rush of Christmas mailings, but hopefully you’ll get this in time for Christmas. My daddy says a soldier always needs more socks, but I say you might need fudge more. I knitted most of these things myself and hope they fit both of you—and don’t you dare laugh at my knitting Isaiah High, until you take a look. I’ve made a lot of progress the last few years.

I had a letter from Mrs. Wentworth. What a nice lady! I’ve sent along some more pecans for her. All the magazines are for you, of course. They’re out of date, but we’d just be throwing them away, so you might as well have them.

As for the book, I’m sure you can get plenty now, all the same, I can’t think of a better present for a man who likes to read as much as you do.

Your friend,

Angel

PS I just read The Yearling. Cried and cried and cried. Not your kinda book, probably, but I liked it a lot. Nature and families and animals.

V-Mail

December 2, 1943

Dear Isaiah,

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year! I suddenly thought this afternoon that you might be somewhere that it snows at Christmas-time this year. I was going to send a snow-glitter card to you, but they’re saying V-Mail gets to y’all in a couple of weeks, so I’m going this route. They sure don’t give you a lot of room, do they? I’m trying to write small.

By the way, when we were children, playing in that tree house, I knew the king had to be dead for a woman to be queen. I’m no dummy! All you have to do is read to see that the only time a queen got to be boss was when her husband died or she never got married.

Maybe this will be the year the war ends, finally. It seems like it’s been going on forever.

Be careful, Isaiah.

Your friend (too),

Angel