The Women of Brewster Place (6 page)

“Basil, you little red devil, come here! Can’t I cook breakfast in peace?”

“But, Miss Eva, Ciel took my coloring book and she tore all the pages.”

“I did not,” Ciel protested, and kicked him.

Basil began crying.

“Why, you evil, narrow-tailed heifer. I’ll break your neck!” And she smacked Ciel on the behind with her wooden cooking spoon.

Basil stopped crying instantly in order to enjoy Ciel’s punishment. “Goody, goody.” He stuck out his tongue at her.

“Goody, goody, on you, Mister,” Miss Eva went after him with the spoon, “I ain’t forgot you broke my china poodle this morning.”

Basil ducked under the table, knowing she wouldn’t be able to bend and reach him.

“Want me to get him for you, Grandma?” Ciel offered, trying to get back into her good graces.

“No, I just want you both out of my kitchen. Out! Out!” She banged on the table with the spoon.

Mattie stood yawning in the kitchen door. “Can’t there be just one morning of peace and quiet in this house—just one?” Ciel and Basil both ran to her, each trying to outshout the other about their various injustices. “I don’t want to hear it,” Mattie sighed. “It’s too early for this nonsense. Now go wash up for breakfast—you’re still in pajamas.”

“Didn’t you hear her? Now, get!” Miss Eva shouted and raised her spoon.

The children ran upstairs. Eva smiled behind their backs and turned toward the stove.

“Well, good morning,” Mattie said, and poured herself a cup of coffee.

“Tain’t natural, just ’tain’t natural,” Miss Eva grumbled at the stove.

“They’re only children, Miss Eva. All children are like that.”

“I ain’t talking about them children, I’m talking ’bout you. You done spent another weekend holed up in this house and ain’t gone out nowhere.”

“Now that’s not true. Friday night I went to choir practice, and Saturday I took Basil to get a pair of shoes and then took him and Ciel to the zoo. And last night I even went to a double feature at the Century, which is why I overslept this morning. That only leaves Sunday morning, Miss Eva, and there’s church today, and then I gotta go back to work tomorrow. So I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

“What I’m talkin’ ’bout is that I ain’t heard you mention no man involved in all them exciting goings-on in your life—church and children and work. It ain’t natural for a young woman like you to live that way. I can’t remember the last time no man come by to take you out.”

Mattie couldn’t remember either. There had been a bus ride with a foreman in the shipping department at her job, and she had gone out a few times with one of the ushers in her church—but that was last spring, or was it last winter?

“Humph.” Mattie shrugged her shoulders and sipped her coffee. “I’ve been so busy, I guess I haven’t noticed. It has been a long time, but so what? I’ve got my hands full raising my son.”

“Children get raised overnight, Mattie. Then what you got? I should know. I raised seven and four of my grand and they all gone except Ciel. But I’m an old woman, my life’s most over. That ain’t no excuse for you. Why, by the time I was your age, I was on my second husband, and you still slow about gettin’ the first.”

“Well, Miss Eva, I’d have to had started twenty years ago to beat your record,” Mattie kidded.

“I ain’t making no joke, child.” And her watery eyes clouded over as she stared at the younger woman. Mattie knew that look well. The old woman wanted a confrontation and would not be budged. “Ain’t you ever had no needs in that direction? No young woman wants an empty bed, year in and year out.”

Mattie felt the blood rushing to her face under Miss Eva’s open stare. She took a few sips of coffee to give herself time to think. Why didn’t she ever feel that way? Was there really something wrong with her? The answers were beyond her at that moment, but Miss Eva was waiting, and she had to say something.

“My bed hasn’t been empty since Basil was born,” she said lightly, “and I don’t think anyone but me would put up with the way that boy kicks in his sleep.”

As soon as the words were out, she regretted them. This was an ancient battle between the two women.

“Basil needs a bed of his own. I been telling you that for years.”

“He’s afraid of the dark. You know that.”

“Most children are afraid at first, but they get used to it.”

“I’m not gonna have my child screaming his head off all night just to please you. He’s still a baby, he doesn’t like sleeping alone, and that’s it!” she said through clenched teeth.

“Five years old ain’t no baby,” Miss Eva said. And then she added mildly, “You sure it’s Basil who don’t want to sleep alone?”

The gentle pity in the faded blue eyes robbed Mattie of the angry accusations she wanted to fling at the old woman for making her feel ashamed. Shame for what? For loving her son, wanting to protect him from his invisible phantoms that lay crouching in the dark? No, those pitying eyes had slid into her unconscious like a blue laser and exposed secrets that Mattie had buried from her own self. They had crept between her sheets and knew that her body had hungered at moments, had felt the need for a filling and caressing of inner spaces. But in those restless moments she had turned toward her manchild and let the soft, sleeping flesh and the thought of all that he was and would be draw those yearnings onto the edge of her lips and the tips of her fingers. And she could not sleep until she released those congested feelings by stroking his moist forehead and planting a kiss there. A mother’s kiss for a sleeping child. And this old
woman’s freakish blue eyes had turned it into something to make her ashamed.

She wanted to get up from the table and spit into those eyes, beat them sightless—those that had befriended her, kept her baby from sharp objects and steep stairs while she worked, wept with her over the death of her parents—she wanted them crushed under her fists for daring to make her ashamed of loving her son.

“I don’t have to take this,” Mattie stammered defensively. “Just because we stay in your house don’t give you a right to tell me how to raise my child. I’m a boarder here, or at least I would be if you’d let me pay you. Just tell me how much I owe you, and I’ll pay up and be out before the week’s over.”

“I ain’t decided yet.”

“You been saying that for five years!” Mattie was frustrated.

“And you been movin’ every time I mention anything about that little spoiled nigger of yours. You still saving my rent money in the bank, ain’t you?”

“Of course.” Mattie had religiously put aside money every month, and her account had grown quite large.

“Good, you’ll be using it soon enough for new clothes for my funeral. That is, if you plan on coming?”

Mattie looked at Miss Eva’s stooped back and the wrinkled yellow neck with grizzled wisps of hair lying on it, and small needles of repentance began to stab at her heart. She would be gone soon, and Mattie didn’t want to imagine facing the loss of another mother.

“You’re a crafty old woman. You always try to win an argument by talkin’ about some funeral. You’re too ornery to die, and you know it.”

Miss Eva chuckled. “Some folks do say that. To tell you the truth, I had planned on stayin’ till I’m a hundred.”

Please do, Mattie thought sadly, and then said aloud, “No, I couldn’t bear you that long—maybe till ninety-nine and a half.”

They smiled at each other and silently agreed to put the argument to rest.

The children came running into the kitchen, scrubbed and penitent. “Let me check those ears,” Mattie said to Ciel and Basil.

She was about to send him back upstairs to wash his when he put his arms around her neck and said, “Mama, I forgot to kiss you hello this morning.” Basil knew he would win his reprieve this way. Miss Eva knew it, too, but she said nothing as she slung the oatmeal into their bowls and slowly shook her head.

Mattie was aware of only the joy that these unsolicited acts of tenderness gave her. She watched him eating his oatmeal, intent on each mouthful that he swallowed because it was keeping her son alive. It was moving through his blood and creating skin cells and hair cells and new muscles that would eventually uncurl and multiply and stretch the skin on his upper arms and thighs, elongate the plump legs that only reached the top rung of his chair. And when they had reached the second rung, Miss Eva would be dead. Her children would have descended upon the beautiful house and stripped it of all that was valuable and sold the rest to Mattie. Her parents would have carried away a screaming Ciel, and as Mattie would look around the gutted house, she’d know why the old yellow woman had made her save her money. She had wanted her spirit to remain in this house through the memory of someone who was capable of loving it as she had. While Basil’s legs pushed down toward the third rung, Mattie would be working two jobs to carry the mortgage on the house. Her son must have room to grow in, a yard to run in, a decent place to bring his friends. Her own spirit must one day have a place to rest because the body could not, as it pushed and struggled to make all around them safe and comfortable. It would all be for him and those to come from the long, muscular thighs of him who sat opposite her at the table.

Mattie looked at the man who was gulping coffee and
shoveling oatmeal into his mouth. “Why you eating so fast? You’ll choke.”

“I got some place to go.”

“It’s Sunday, Basil. You been runnin’ all weekend. I thought you were gonna stay home and help me with the yard.”

“Look, I’m only going out for a few minutes. I told you I’ll cut the grass, and I will, so stop hassling me.”

Mattie remained silent because she didn’t want to argue with him while he ate. He’d had a nervous stomach all his life, and she didn’t want him to get cramps or run out of the house, refusing to eat at all. She doubted that she would see him anymore that day, and she wanted to be certain he got at least one decent meal.

“All right, you want more toast or coffee?” she offered, as way of apology.

He really didn’t, but he let her fix him another cup to show that he was no longer annoyed. He thanked her by remaining to finish his breakfast.

“Okay, I’ll see you in a while,” he said, and pushed his chair back. “Hey, could you lend me a coupla dollars to get some gas for the car?” He saw that she had opened her mouth to refuse and went on, “I don’t want it for today but tomorrow, I gotta go looking for another job. I don’t pick up my check from the last place until Thursday, and I don’t wanna waste four days sitting around here doing nothing.” He bent down and whispered in her ear, “You know I’m not the kind of guy to hang around and let a woman support him.” Seeing her smile, he straightened up and said, “But I would make a good pimp, wouldn’t I, Mama?” And he pantomimed putting on a cocked hat and strutted in the middle of the floor.

Mattie laughed and openly scorned his foolish antics while inwardly admitting that he had to be considered attractive by many women. Basil looked exactly like his father, but the clean, naturally curved lines of Butch’s mouth seemed transformed into a mild sullenness when placed on Basil’s face. His clear brown eyes were heavily lashed, and many young
women had discovered just one heartbeat too late that his slightly drooping eyelids were not mirrors of boyish seductiveness but hardened apathy.

Mattie had never met any of Basil’s girlfriends, and he rarely mentioned them. She thought about this as she gave him the money and watched him leave the house. She cleared off the breakfast dishes, and it suddenly came to her that she hadn’t met many of his male friends, either. Where was he going? She truly didn’t know, and it had come to be understood that she was not to ask. How long had it been that way? Surely it had happened within moments. It seemed that only hours ago he had been the child who could hug her neck and talk himself out of a spanking, who had brought home crayoned valentines, and had cried when she went to her second job. So then, who was this stranger who had done away with her little boy and left her with no one and so alone?

Mattie pondered this as her hands plunged into the soapy dishwater, and she mechanically washed bowls and silverware. She tried to recapture the years and hold them up for inspection, so she could pinpoint the transformation, but they slipped through her fingers and slid down the dishes, hidden under the iridescent bubbles that broke with the slightest movement of her hand. She quickly saw that it was an impossible task and abandoned the effort. He had grown up, that was all. She looked up from the sink and gasped as she caught her reflection in the windowpane—but when had she grown old?

Any possible answer had disappeared down the drain with the used dishwater, and she watched it go without regret and scoured the porcelain until it shone. She changed the freshly starched kitchen curtains and rewaxed the tiles. She went through the house vacuuming clean carpets and dusting spotless tables—these were the testimony to her lost years. There was a need to touch and smell and see that it was all in place. It would always be there to comfort and affirm when she would have nothing else.

She could not find the little boy whom this had all been for, but she found an old cut-glass bowl that she washed and polished and filled with autumn flowers from her yard. She put the bowl on a windowsill in her sun porch, and, exhausted, sat among the huge vines and plants, watching the fading sun dissolve into the prismed edges of the bowl. She loved this room above all the others—a place to see things grow. And she had watched and coaxed and nurtured the greenery about her. Miss Eva’s presence was there in the few pieces of china bric-a-brac that Mattie had saved over the years. And it was here that she would come and sit when there was a problem or some complex decision to be made. She felt guilty about missing church that day, but if God were everywhere, surely He was here among so much natural beauty and peace. So Mattie sat there and prayed, but sometimes her supplications for comfort were to the wisdom of a yellow, blue-eyed spirit who had foreseen this day and had tried to warn her.

Mattie sat there for hours, and still Basil did not come. She looked through the windows at the long grass and decided to cut it the next day after work, if her back didn’t bother her too much. It was becoming more difficult each year to keep up the house alone. She got up from the couch stiffly and climbed the steps toward her bedroom.