The Women of Brewster Place (5 page)

She thought about taking night courses at school in order to get a better job, but what with working six days a week, she hardly ever saw the baby as it was. It was heartbreaking when she missed his first step, and she had cried for two hours when she first heard him call Mrs. Prell “Mama.”

One Friday night Mattie was asleep with Basil, and he had squirmed out of her arms and lay on his stomach near the edge of the bed. His bottle had fallen out of his mouth and rolled on the floor next to the blanket. A rat crept out of the hole behind the dresser and cautiously sniffed around the wall for crumbs. Finding nothing, it grew bolder in its search and circled slowly toward the bed. It had learned to fear the human smell but the stillness of the bodies and its hunger drew it nearer to the bed. It was about to turn away and begin a new search toward the wall when it smelled the dried milk and sugar. Giving a squeak of anticipation, it edged toward the smell and found the baby’s bottle. It licked the sweet crusted milk around the hole of the nipple and tried to gnaw through the thick rubber. Then the same smell drifted down from above its head, and, abandoning the nipple, it crawled up the blanket toward the fresh aroma of milk, sugar, and saliva. It licked around the baby’s chin and lips,
and when there was nothing left, it sought more and sank its fangs into the soft flesh.

Basil’s screams sent Mattie bolt upright in the bed, and in her sleepy confusion she instinctively hugged her arms to her and found them empty. She felt something leap from the bed and scramble across the wooden floor toward the dresser. She reached out blindly for the howling child, grabbed him to her chest, and stumbled toward the light switch. The sudden movements and brightness of the room frightened the child even more, and he kicked and fought her in his confusion and pain.

“Oh, God!” she cried as she saw the blood dripping down his cheek from the two small punctures. She tried to calm the wailing child against her chest but he sensed her fear and continued to scream. She put him on the bed and cleaned his cheek with alcohol and rocked and soothed him down into a whimper. She reached for his bottle and, seeing the gnawed nipple, threw it against the wall in anger and disgust. The shattering glass frightened the child again, and he began to cry and Mattie cried with him.

She sat up all night with the lights on, and Basil finally fell into a fitful sleep. The next morning she took him to the hospital for a tetanus shot and ointment for his cheek. She returned to the boardinghouse, picked up her clothes, and with her baby in one arm and her suitcase in the other, she went looking for another place to live.

She walked the entire day, and her hand became blistered from the handle of the suitcase. Basil was growing heavy and restless in her arms, and his constant whining and struggling was taxing her strength. She had thought that she would find another place within hours, but her choices were few. After
countless attempts, she learned that there was no need in wasting her energy to climb to steps in the white neighborhoods that displayed vacancy signs, and she even learned to shun certain neatly manicured black neighborhoods.

As the evening approached she cursed the aching feet that were beginning to fail her and she cursed her haste in leaving the only shelter they had, but then she thought about the gnawed bottle nipple and kept walking. She had her week’s pay; she could go to a hotel. She could buy a oneway ticket home. Tomorrow was Sunday; she could look again. She could go home. If she found nothing Sunday, she could try again Monday. She could go home. If nothing Monday, she must show at work for Tuesday. Who would keep the baby? She could go home. Home. Home.

In her confusion Mattie had circled the same block twice. She remembered passing that old white woman just minutes before. She must have wandered into one of their neighborhoods again. She started to approach her and ask for directions to the bus station, but she changed her mind. She shifted Basil in her arms and silently walked past the fence.

“Where you headin’ with that pretty red baby? You lost, child?”

Mattie looked for the direction of the voice.

“If you wants the bus depot, you walkin’ in the wrong direction, ’cause nobody in their right mind would be trying to walk to the train station. It’s clear on the other side of town.”

Mattie realized that the old woman was actually talking to her, but it was a black voice. She hesitantly approached the fence and stared incredulously into a pair of watery blue eyes.

“What you gapin’ at? You simple-minded or something? I asked if you lost?”

Mattie saw that the evening light had hidden the yellow undertones in the finely wrinkled white face, and it had softened the broad contours of the woman’s pug nose and full lips.

“Yes, mam. I mean, no, mam,” she stammered. “I was looking for a place to stay and couldn’t find none, so I was looking for the bus depot, I guess,” she finished confusedly.

“What, you plan on sleeping in the depot with that baby tonight?”

“No, I was gonna buy a ticket and go home, I guess, or find a hotel and try again tomorrow, or maybe find a place on the way to the depot. I don’t know, I…” Mattie stopped talking because she knew she probably sounded like a complete fool to the woman, but she was so tired that she couldn’t think, and her legs were starting to tremble from lack of sleep and the heavy load she had carried around all day. She bit on her bottom lip to hold back the tears that were burning the corner of her eyes.

“Well, where’d you sleep last night?” the woman said softly. “You get kicked out?”

“No, mam.” And Mattie told her about the boardinghouse and the rat.

“And you just pick up and leave with no place to stay? Ain’t that a caution. Whyn’t you just plug up the hole with some steel wool and stay there till you could get better?”

Mattie tightened her arm around Basil and shook her head. There was no way she could have slept another night in that place without nightmares of things that would creep out of the walls to attack her child. She could never take him back to a place that had caused him so much pain.

The woman looked at the way she held the child and understood.

“Ya know, you can’t keep him runnin’ away from things that hurt him. Sometimes, you just gotta stay there and teach him how to go through the bad and good of whatever comes.”

Mattie grew impatient with the woman. She didn’t want a lecture about taking care of her son.

“If you’ll just show me the way to the depot, I’ll be obliged, mam,” she said coldly. “Or if you know somewhere that has a room.”

The woman chuckled. “No need to go gettin’ snippy. That’s one of the privileges of old age—you can give plenty of advice ’cause most folks think that’s all you got left anyway. Now I may know of something available and I may not,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “You workin’?”

Mattie told her where she worked.

“Where’s your husband?”

Mattie knew this question was coming, and she was tempted to say that he had been killed in the war, but that would be a denial of her son, and she felt nothing shameful about what he was.

“I ain’t got one.” And she bent down and picked up her suitcase.

“Well,” the old woman chuckled, “I’ve had five—outlived ’em all. So I can tell you, you ain’t missing much.” She opened the gate. “Since you done already picked up your valise, you might as well come on in and get that boy out the night air. Got plenty of room here. Just me and my grandbaby. He’ll be good company for Lucielia.”

She took Basil from Mattie’s arms. “Lord, he’s heavy. How’d you tote him all day? Look a’ them fat legs, pretty red thing, you. I was always partial to reddish men. My second husband was his color, but did he have a temper.” And she cooed and talked to the baby and Mattie as if she had known them for years.

Mattie followed her up the stone steps, trying to adjust her mind to this rapid turn of events and the nameless old woman who had altered their destinies. They entered the house and she set her suitcase on the thick green carpet and looked around the huge living room overcrowded with expensive mahogany furniture and china bric-a-brac. Through a door on the right, a yellowing crystal and brass chandelier hung over an oak table large enough to seat twelve people.

“Don’t mind the house, child. I know it’s a mess but I
ain’t got the strength I once had to keep it tidy. I guess you all must be hungry. Come on in the kitchen.” And she headed for the back of the house with the baby.

Mattie was beginning to collect herself. “But I don’t even know your name!” she called out, still fixed to the living room floor.

The old woman turned around. “That mean you can’t eat my food? Well, since you gotta be properly introduced, the name of what’s in the kitchen is pot roast, oven-browned potatoes, and string beans. And I believe there’s even some angel food cake waitin’ to make your acquaintance.” She started toward the kitchen again and threw over her shoulder, “And the crazy old woman you’re sure by now you’re talkin’ to is Eva Turner.”

Mattie hurried behind Eva and Basil into the kitchen.

“I meant no offense, Mrs. Turner. It’s just that this was all so quick and you’ve really been kind and my name is Mattie Michael and this is Basil and I don’t even know how much space you got for us or how much you want to charge or anything, so you can see why I’m a little confused, can’t you?” she finished helplessly.

The woman listened to her rattled introduction with calm amusement. “People ’round here call me Miss Eva.” She put the baby on the polished tile floor and went to the stove. She seemed to ignore Mattie and hummed to herself while she heated and stirred the food.

Mattie was beginning to wonder if the woman might actually be a bit insane, and she looked around the kitchen for some sign of it. All she saw was rows of polished copper pots, huge potted plants, and more china bric-a-brac. There was a child’s playpen pushed in the corner with piles of colorful rubber toys. Basil had seen the toys also and was tottering toward them. Mattie went to stop him, and he cried out in protest.

Miss Eva turned from the stove. “Leave him be. He ain’t botherin’ nothing. Them’s Lucielia’s toys, and she’s asleep now.”

“Who’s Lucielia?” Mattie asked.

Miss Eva looked as if she were now doubting Mattie’s sanity. “I told you outside—that’s my son’s child. I’ve had her since she was six months old. Her parents went back to Tennessee and just left the baby. Neither of ’em are worth the spit it takes to cuss ’em. But then, I can’t blame her daddy none. He takes after his father—my last husband, who I shouldn’t of never married, but I was always partial to dark-skinned men.”

She brought the plates of food to the table, and while Mattie ate, Miss Eva insisted on feeding Basil. Mattie didn’t know if it was the seasoned food or the warm air in the kitchen, but she felt herself settling like fine dust on her surroundings and accepting the unexplained kindness of the woman with a hunger of which she had been unaware. In the unabashed fashion of the old, Miss Eva unfolded her own life and secret exploits to Mattie, and without realizing she was being questioned, Mattie found herself talking about things that she had buried within her. The young black woman and the old yellow woman sat in the kitchen for hours, blending their lives so that what lay behind one and ahead of the other became indistinguishable.

“Child, I know what you talkin’ about. My daddy was just like that, too. I remember the night I ran off with my first husband, who was a singer. My daddy hunted us down for three months and then drug me home and kept me locked in my room for weeks with the windows all nailed up. But soon as he let me out, Virgil came back and got me, and we was off again.” She laughed heartily at the memory. “We joined the vaudeville circuit and went on stage. My daddy didn’t speak to me for years, but I couldn’t stay away from that Virgil. I was always partial to brown-skinned men.”

Mattie was puzzled. “But I thought you said before that you were partial to—”

“Ain’t it a fact.” Miss Eva’s face spread into a wicked grin. “Well, if the truth be told, I likes ’em all, but they don’t seem to agree with me—like fried onions. You like fried onions?
I’ll make us some liver and fried onions for Sunday supper tomorrow.”

“That would be nice, mam, but you haven’t told me yet what it’ll cost to stay here with our room and board.”

“I ain’t runnin’ no boardinghouse, girl; this is my home. But there’s spare room upstairs that you’re welcome to, along with the run of the house.”

“But I can’t stay without paying something,” Mattie insisted, “and with you offering to mind the baby, too—I can’t take advantage like that. Please, what will it cost?”

“All right,” Miss Eva said, as she looked at the sleeping child in her arms, “I ain’t decided yet, but in time I’ll let you know.”

Mattie was too sleepy to argue any further; she could hardly keep her eyes open. Miss Eva showed her to the bedroom upstairs, and Mattie was to die with the memory of the smell of lemon oil and the touch of cool, starched linen on her first night—of the thirty years of nights—she would spend in that house.

And she lay down with her son and sank into a timeless sleep. Time’s passage through the memory is like molten glass that can be opaque or crystallize at any given moment at will: a thousand days are melted into one conversation, one glance, one hurt, and one hurt can be shattered and sprinkled over a thousand days. It is silent and elusive, refusing to be dammed and dripped out day by day; it swirls through the mind while an entire lifetime can ride like foam on the deceptive, transparent waves and get sprayed onto the consciousness at ragged, unexpected intervals.

Mattie got up Sunday morning to the usual banging and howling in the house on weekends. Miss Eva was in the kitchen fighting with the children.

“Grandma, Basil broke my crayon. See, he bit it right in
half—and on purpose!” Lucielia wailed.