The Wilful Daughter (43 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY

“
A pillar of the community.” That’s what everybody said about the Piano Man. He had taught for two years at Tuskegee in the high school and played in the churches (no doubt some of them said he found those woodland honky tonks and played there too) then had come home to Atlanta, to a home his father-in-law helped build on a nice piece of property, to a job at the college where his wife had once taught, to a position as the organist and director of the choir, as a father to a dark skinned baby girl that bore no resemblance to him except for her color (for this he thanked the lord each day) and to the arms of a family way of life he had never known.

He was a pillar of society and he was bored to death.

It was not easy being the husband of Minnelsa Brown Jenkins. Not easy to watch her get pregnant four times over the last five years and each time end up in bed and lose the baby.

She was now thirty-eight years old and should stop trying most of the good sisters of the church hinted behind his back. He wanted her to stop trying, for her to stop crying in the middle of the night about the babies, her poor four babies she called them, that didn’t make it. He told her he was happy with little Ophelia. Happy in their little house on his piece of property.

In truth, this pillar of the community had not been happy since he had married into the Blacksmith’s family. The Blacksmith made his first son-in-law into a son, something the Piano Man had hoped for but found he could not take. The Blacksmith was far too demanding a man.

William Brown had a schedule for his sons-in-law. A schedule the Piano Man did not want to keep. But when one marries into a family for money, which he had, and when one has more to lose than gain, which he did, one listens and does as one is told.

Sunday dinner was always at the Blacksmith’s house. The Piano Man always played something while the women folks cooked. And afterward he would sit and talk with his father-in-law about politics. Or he would help his father-in-law question prospective suitors.

Every holiday meal was taken at the Blacksmith’s house.

Every birthday party took place there.

Once a week, usually Wednesday when he was not teaching classes, he had lunch at the shop with the smithy and the pastor of the family church. Lunch usually consisted of some fried chicken and biscuits and leftover greens from the night before. But for dessert the men sipped ‘ice water’ out of mason jars.

The first time he had gone to one of these luncheons, the Piano Man hoped that it would be his last. For the ‘ice water’ they sipped was not water at all but chunks of ice floating in very potent distilled fluids.

The Piano Man was not able to keep up with the old men, even though he tried, and it was his father-in-law who took him home to a worried Minnelsa who had been up most of the night with a cholericly Ophelia and was suffering from morning sickness. The Piano Man’s head swam in fifty different circles before he fell asleep, angered by the prospect that he would have to do this again and again.

He hated the lunches but he couldn’t hurt the old man’s feelings. So he would go and sip the infamous ‘ice water’, or not drink it at all and not feel that his manhood was impugned. From time to time another old man would join them, or the talk would turn to something interesting. But he always hated going.

He hated all the things he had to do. He was never sure what would happen with the property next. The old man had some people living in a shack farming it. Although Peter didn’t want this, they had an agreement with the Blacksmith. When Peter complained to his wife that this was now his property, that maybe he would like to have control over what happened here she reminded him: “My father promised them they could stay there. They pay their due, why put them out? Where would they go?”

He didn’t really care. This was not what he wanted, but the Blacksmith never asked him. No one ever asked him. He was sure it wasn’t going to be his property until the Blacksmith died.

And he was never going to die. The Blacksmith was strong as a bull. He was still bigger and stronger than most men the Piano Man had ever known. He never got sick, not even a sniffle, he never got tired. Up every morning before dawn, in bed soon after sunset. On mornings when the Piano Man had not been able to sleep the night before he would hear the ring of the anvil across the Piedmont.

He’s alive, he would think, and then he would wonder why the Blacksmith felt he had to make him the son Willie hadn’t been.

Now Minnelsa was pregnant again and she held her stomach too much, mama told her. Bira didn’t want to tell her that she wasn’t really holding her stomach, she was just touching her baby. But they wanted her to play it safe, to be extra careful. Bed rest now and to the end. She wasn’t about to argue. She wanted this baby to live.

So she sat on the porch after Sunday dinner in the nice April air and kept her feet on the little stool while her sisters bustled about serving coffee to their men. Peter sat in the parlor and played something soothing on the piano as he sipped his sherry. Only once that afternoon had he asked her how she was feeling and she was glad. Even though she loved the attention, her sisters and her mother were enough to drive her crazy with their worry.

Rosa’s two year old played in the yard next to Ophelia. The baby boy was dirty again, Rosa scolded her husband. “I know he’s a boy but you can at least see that he doesn’t get this dirty when I’m trying to work in the kitchen.” The man smiled at his son who smiled back.

“
Boys are supposed to get dirty,” the Blacksmith said as he looked at his grandson and his sons-in-law agreed. James, Jr. continued to play in the dirt as his mother walked into her parents’ house mumbling under her breath about the stupidity of men.

Minnelsa watched Ophelia watch her aunt and uncle and then without a clue as to why, the chocolate little girl threw a handful of dirt into the air and danced under it as it came down. Minnelsa was shocked but said nothing. When Ophelia did it again, the Blacksmith all but roared. “What is that girl doing?”

He ran into the yard and scooped her up from under the newly blooming dogwood tree. He held her in one big arm while he dusted the dirt from her pretty dress. “There, there, my little Ophelia. That wasn’t nice. Look how you messed up your pretty dress.”

“
I wanna play in the dirt, grandpa,” she said to the big man. But he paid no attention. “I wanna play,” she said louder.

The Blacksmith carried her to the porch, leaving a happy James Jr. throwing dirt and water into the air creating a mud shower. He sat down in his chair, the delicate little girl on his lap. He kissed her cheek and pulled her black braids over her shoulders. If she looked closely, if she looked beyond the dark color and the tiny body, Minnelsa could see her sister June in this child. And she looked at her everyday, she looked that closely each day to see if she could tell something about the man who was her father, but all she got was he was a dark man. Everything else about the child was June.

She had grown to love her and be jealous of her at the same. Look at papa, she thought. I don’t remember him taking me on his lap like that on a Sunday afternoon. We were all sent to the kitchen to help mama or sitting in a circle reading the bible. I don’t remember playing. I don’t remember my father wiping dust from my dress.

I don’t remember my father loving me.

“
I’ll take her, Papa,” Minnelsa told her father as Ophelia started fidgeting.

“
It’s all right daughter. I got her.” Then he winked at Minnelsa and turned to the girl. “Now, Miss Ophelia, what seems to be the problem?”

“
I wanna get down, Grandpa.” She touched the old man’s cheek with her soft hands. “ I wanna play with James Jr.”

“
Well you can play, but not what James Jr. is playing.”

She made a pouting face and crossed her tiny brown arms. “Why not?”

“
Because you’re a little lady and ladies don’t get their Sunday dresses dirty.”

“
Why not?” she asked again, lip still out and arms still crossed.

“
Because ladies don’t play in the dirt.”

She didn’t speak at first, just sat on her grandfather’s lap like she was thinking. Minnelsa watched as she told the Blacksmith: “Then I don’t wanna be a lady, I wanna be a boy. Like James Jr.”

Minnelsa saw it before anyone, had seen it all along, but today it was more prevalent than before. When Ophelia didn’t get her way she was just like June.

The Blacksmith saw it and stared at her. Bira, who had just come out on the porch, saw it too. And when the piano playing stopped, they all knew that the Piano Man had heard his daughter turn into her mother, her true mother.

A tear rolled down Minnelsa’s face as the screen door slammed and the Piano Man came and got the child. “I’ll take her for a walk.” He grabbed the child from his father- in-laws arms.

“
I wanna play with James Jr.!” Ophelia howled as he carried her towards the street.

“
You’re going for a walk,” Piano Man ordered. “And that’s that!”

The Sunday afternoon portrait of life on the porch returned to normal once they left. Except Minnelsa was rubbing her stomach and the Blacksmith was watching his granddaughter as she was carried away.

“
She’s just like her mother,” he whispered to Bira.

“
Why shouldn’t she be?” was her reply and the Blacksmith turned to her startled. “But we shouldn’t mention this again because she has a different mother now and that mother has to be able to raise her without hearing or seeing how much that child is like June.”

Without further comment the Blacksmith went back to reading his book while the sons-in-law talked about things that he was tired of thinking about: the government, the Klan, life as a colored man in Georgia. He was tired of hearing about it, but he wouldn’t stop them. This was their world. He was just an old man whose youngest daughter had birthed a baby and then disappeared.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“
Where we going, Daddy?” Ophelia asked once he had been carrying her for a while. He didn’t answer, but he had to get away from the Blacksmith’s house.

“
I want to get down,” the baby girl fussed and he placed her on the pavement.

“
No running,” he said softly but he was sure she wasn’t paying attention.

This time she was. She reached up and slid her tiny hand into his long one. He looked down into those big eyes, eyes that belonged to June. Minnelsa said he spoiled the child worse then he would one of his own - his real own. Unfortunately he knew why he was doing this. The little girl had stolen his heart.

She was the only reason he remained a subject of the Blacksmith.

“
Where we going, Daddy?” she asked again as he held her hand tighter. “We going to play?”

He always took her the same place on these Sundays when Ophelia got out of hand.

“
Try not to get dirty Ophelia.” He was somber as he looked down at the dark skin and the big eyes that she had inherited from him.

Mine. I can never say it aloud and yet I will always know it. She is mine.

He had known the moment he walked into the room and saw Minnelsa holding her. The look on Minnelsa’s face the first time she held Ophelia had certainly frightened him.

She held the brown bundle as if it were her own and stared at him as if she knew he was the father. Then she cuddled the little girl and smiled. “There is nothing except the color of her skin to give the father away. Dark brown like so many other men that June had been around, Peter. I guess we will never know.” He had agreed with her although he could have used the argument, if needed, that the Blacksmith was much darker than Bira. But he left it alone.

Ophelia pulled on his arm. “I wanna play, Daddy. I wanna play in the flowers.”

And so they went the same place they went most spring Sundays, a small field near the main road within walking distance of the school and his in-laws home. A place that he enjoyed visiting. He took Ophelia to the place where he had lain with June one night in the field of flowers.

He let go of the child’s hand and she ran into bright green grass that was almost as tall as she was. She ran towards the flowers.

She was so happy. If Willie had been there, he would have loved to paint what he saw: his little niece amidst a field of dandelions in her lovely spring dress. She danced among them singing: “Mine, mine!” as loud as she could because the Piano Man had told her it was alright to be loud, to be happy here.

He told her it was alright to be everything you wanted to be here that you couldn’t be at the Blacksmith’s house. Here she could sing and dance and sometimes play in the dirt. Here she could run and fall down and get leaves in her hair. She hadn’t really understood because seldom was she told not to do anything. She was a baby, a child of pure innocence whose only desires- to play in the mud and run through a field of flowers-were taken away from her without explanation.

Ophelia never understood the beauty of it all until he told her this was their place. That seemed to make a difference. Mama couldn’t come here, not grandpa, not any of them. Just Ophelia and daddy. “Our place,” she repeated happily whenever they came to it.

He loosened his tie as he walked towards his little girl dancing amidst the flowers. She would make up songs sometimes when they came here, songs from tunes she heard him play at home or at her grandparents. She sung in the sweet voice of a baby but she could carry a tune just like her mother.