The Wilful Daughter (47 page)

And kissing her face, gasping when she touched the swollen spot on her head, Bira told her: “Child, this is your home. You can always come here.”

Ophelia put her hands on her little hips and said loudly in the voice of a child who would not be ignored: “Grandma, that’s the lady in the pictures.” This time they all laughed.

Madman looked at the many paintings of June around him and smiled.

“
Yes, child,” Bira said calmly. “This is your Aunt June.”

* * *

Now there is really nobody left to tell what happened on that day when the Blacksmith’s youngest daughter returned home. All that’s left is the rumors, rumors passed down by some jealous people, by some inquisitive people and by some people who might have known better. But you know how rumors are: they start out as the truth and after about fifty years or so they get changed so much you don’t even know where the truth begins and the lie ends. But one thing common to all the rumors that day is that Minnelsa, in her delicate condition, got in that 1923 Deisenberg with that strange but talkative Floyd man and pointed out the directions to her father’s shop so she could let him know that the prodigal daughter was home.

Making this stop didn’t come at a good time. Minnelsa did not know that on occasion her father and the right Reverend Chancey partook of their ‘ice water.’ Over the years he and the right Reverend took to sitting under the tree and talking about everything that two colored men in the 1920s could talk about. In the past these spurts of drinking and discussion started out being one afternoon a week but of late the Blacksmith had noticed a sharp decline in his business, and now, in 1927, unbeknownst to his wife, he took to drinking in the morning, whether with the Reverend or not.

He had a good reason, or so he felt.

“
It’s automobiles, Chancey. More colored folks than ever are somehow getting automobiles. Where do they get the money?”

Chancey licked his lips delighting in his libations. “Brother Brown, you just mad ’cause they got the cars and didn’t have to borrow the money from you.”

“
Naw, that’s not it. My sons-in-law keep telling me it’s the times. Things are looking good and all the white folks have one, if they can afford one.”

“
You could afford at least two,” the Reverend laughed, “’stead of the horse and wagon. Why you so old fashioned with all the money you done collected over the years?”

“
I don’t see the need for it. The only place I really go when I’m not working is the church and the church is damn near across the street.”

“
Watch it, brother. Cursing about the Lord’s house.” The Reverend was getting a little tipsy.

“
Sorry, but my wagon and my horse take me wherever I want to go.” Since they had had automobiles for years, most white folks were finding it hard to come visit a colored Blacksmith in colored Atlanta even if he was the best. The white folks who came to him all said it: they had cars now and fewer horses. Besides, mechanics took care of all their automobile needs.

“
Brother Brown, when you gonna tell your family that in the past two years business has slacked off so much that you welcomed the return of the property Reverend Charles had been given in dowry, even if it meant public humiliation of your beloved daughter Fawn?”

He cut his eyes to the minister who was always truthful with him. True, he had immediately rented out the house she had stayed in with the no good preacher, and made plans to sell parcels of the land for cash and lease off the rest. He had spent some of that money buying back the property Waddell had sold from under Jewel when he decided life was better in New York City. It had cost him a pretty penny- more then he had originally paid for it-but there were still people farming it who didn’t know it had changed hands. He wished he could get the money back from those cowardly men who had married his daughters and then. . .

“
You know, Chancey, automobiles and no good sons-in-law cause me to spend the hours from twelve noon to three alone or in your company.”

“
Don’t blame this home brew just ’cause you feel the pangs of no longer being the success that you once were.” Chancey had his hat over his face indicating it was time to take his usual thirty minute nap.

“
I’m not so unsuccessful. I did some things right. Thank God for James and Peter. At least I don’t have to worry about the doctor, who now heads the colored hospital I might add, taking my Rosa away. And Peter-where would he go with a pregnant wife and a young child? These are smart men,” he told the preacher. “They know which side their bread is buttered on. For them the south is a land of milk and honey for they have everything a colored man could wish for. Unlike that fool that traipsed off to New York to work with white people who promised equal pay. I thought Waddell would have known better than to believe something like that.”

Work for yourself and make your own pay, he had tried to tell the boy. But he had gone anyway. Leaving a heartbroken Jewel behind. Every time Jewel mentioned going up there, the Blacksmith would remind her that it wouldn’t be the same: they had no family there. She’d only be with strangers. Most of the colored people in New York? Oh they’d send money home from their good paying jobs, but their good paying jobs were the same jobs they had in the south. Cleaning up and cooking. Nothing special. How many of those colored folks in the North had something of their own? Why most of the smart ones, the ones who wrote books and music, went to Europe. Did Jewel really want to go there?

He was standing against the tree laughing with a mason jar full of ice and a clear liquid when the white car drove up.

“
Another damn automobile. Pardon my expression, Chancey, but as I said the automobiles and the no account men who married my daughters for my property seem to be the source of my demise.”

The Reverend lifted his hat and looked at the blurred vision before him. “If it was me, Brother Brown, I’d buy me one and take it apart to see what makes people want it so.” He laughed.

The Blacksmith didn’t. He would not even broach the subject of the men the Blacksmith allowed to marry his daughter. He shook his head and sipped more brew while the Blacksmith cleared his eyes. Much to the Reverend’s surprise he saw Minnelsa step out of the car.

“
Lord, what has Peter done to bring this girl here,” the Reverend mumbled and hoped his friend did not hear.

The incline of the hill would be too steep for her, she might fall, and so, forgetting his inebriation, the Blacksmith climbed towards her. As he walked he felt a pang in his chest, but nothing new. Lots of them had come and gone lately, and he wondered if this was one of those connected with the clear liquid that soothed his lonesome afternoons or was it fear that something was wrong?

He decided to think it was the latter.

“
Is your mother all right?” Then, staring at the strange man, he added: “Who is this?”

She was already tired but she said nothing. She was not used to being out and about. She wasn’t supposed to be. This baby was huge inside of her and she tired so easily. She wanted it so badly to survive and yet, as usual, she had gone out of her way to do something for her sister, for her family and for her mother.

“
Papa,” she said softly. “This is Floyd, Mr. Floyd. . .” She looked at his foolish smile and said: “I’m sorry, I don’t know your last name.”

He smiled brightly. “Oh that’s all right, Miz Jenkins. Sir, I’m Floyd, Floyd Gaines. No need to be formal, you can call me. . .”

The Blacksmith cut him off. “What’s wrong, Minnelsa? You know you shouldn’t be out here.”

“
I tried to tell her that, sir, as did your wife, but she insisted that if she didn’t go with me, since wasn’t nobody else around, was no way I was going to be able to find you and your other daughters and sons-in-law like your Mrs. wanted.”

The Blacksmith felt the drink coming to his head. It was barely 11 am, he was half drunk and for the first time in his life he had not had a customer since dawn. He and the Reverend had been drinking for an hour. An hour! What was wrong with him? He was not a young man anymore. Maybe he was just as strong as he used to be but he was not young and he had no business feeling the pain in his chest and his head as if he had been out all night carousing with the boys.

“
Sir, why are you here?” the Blacksmith shouted trying to stand up straight and hide the effects of the brew.

The voice sat Floyd back a bit. The old man was huge, Floyd knew, but harmless he hoped. Still he remembered that right before he left home at sixteen (that was fifteen years ago) he had watched his grandfather beat his own father half to death. He didn’t remember the reason for the beating, but he had learned to respect elderly men who worked everyday of their life with their hands in a field or a blacksmith’s shop, toting, lifting, making, creating with strong backs and arms and spirits that white men and young black men couldn’t break. The Blacksmith was one of these men. He could tell by his face, a few lines of age, a lot of gray hair, but the body of a man that worked hard every day. Floyd just played the guitar. The hardest labor he had done in the last five years was drive a car. Physically he knew he was no match for this man who was twice his age. So he spoke quickly and briefly, which for a talkative person like himself was a very hard chore. “I’m here sir to tell you that I, I mean we, brought your daughter June home, sir. Brought her home ’cause she’s sick.”

Minnelsa leaned on the side of the car. There it was done, it was said.

The Blacksmith felt his heart again, so he had been right. This was not a pain from climbing up the hill, this was one of those feelings you get when the world is going wrong.

Or was it going right? Right because his daughter, his baby girl, his little Bira, was home?

With the iron will of a strong determined man, he forced the feeling from the drink to leave his head. He turned to the man and said: “Take us home, please, Mr. Gaines.” And forgetting the Reverend he helped Minnelsa into the car and followed her in silence.

* * *

It was the first time since the birth of his last child that the Blacksmith had left his shop in the middle of the day. Left it unattended, unlocked. But no one seemed to come there anymore anyway.

The ride home was much shorter in a car than it would be in his wagon but he wished they could go faster. As trees and houses sped past, as women walked down the road and were left alongside in their dust, the Blacksmith wondered what had happened to June to make her come home.

“
What is wrong with your sister, Minnelsa? Where has she been? Why haven’t we heard from her in almost five years?”

Minnelsa listened as she rubbed her belly. “I don’t know, Papa. None of us were sure when June disappeared. A woman who worked with Fannie and Ella said June got in a white car full of men at the train station. That’s how she left. Fannie and Ella confirmed that it was true.”

The Blacksmith cleared his throat. “Four years later, still with the men in the white car, she returns? The world out there must have been rough. . .”

“
But she had made it on her own for a long time, Papa. She did make it.”

Minnelsa knew where her sister had been.

She knew because whenever Peter’s friends were in town she overheard them tell him about sweet young June Brown who was singing here, performing there and up in New York City living the high life. Peter pretended not to be jealous of his sister-in-law’s travels, her fame, and her connection with people he had once known. He had even gone so far as to tell Minnelsa that he had always known that life wasn’t for him. He had a family now, he had a home. He was a family man. A married man, a teacher, a church organist.

He had roots in a place and no desire to cut them free.

But she had seen the need to cut them free on his face each time his friends came by. Each time those traveling men stopped traveling on the road of life long enough to pay him visit she watched his long face and long hands play different things on that piano. He stayed gone longer than usual. He stayed out later than usual. She could feel his need to leave.

So she had tried to make him stay. This baby was supposed to make him stay. She had to give him this one.

Floyd talked all the way to the house and no one told him to shut up mainly because they were each involved in their own thoughts. Floyd didn’t talk about June or their travels, he just talked about things that interested him, like his guitar and the places he had been and the places he was going to go when he became famous. Because he was going to be famous.

When they reached the house, the Blacksmith helped Minnelsa out and up the few steps. He took her to the room she now stayed in with her husband. He took off her shoes and put her legs up on the bed. He covered her with a thin sheet and then said: “Thank you for coming to get me daughter, but I don’t think you should have gone in the car. . .”

“
Papa,” her voice groggy, the ride home had lulled her into wanting to sleep. “She’s very sick. She’s my sister.”

“
But you have a baby coming, daughter.” He kissed her forehead with a tenderness unbecoming his strength. The last time he had been this tender was the day she got married. The Blacksmith was not tender man.

“
Papa, let her stay,” she whispered as he walked away.

“
What, daughter?” He came back to her and leaned close. Tears filled her eyes. Life would be so easy with June gone. Mama had gotten used to the idea, she had been the last one to accept it: leaving the porch lamp on every night for two years hoping June would return, asking the family in Alabama had she been back and then going there to see for herself that the girl had not returned, inquiring of the fellows that she knew hung out in juke joints had they seen her.