Third Girl from the Left (21 page)

“Well, me and your daddy, we're just worried that you're gonna get taken advantage of. That . . . well . . . that you'll get to like it or you'll get with some boy who likes it and you'll be writing a check you can't cash. We just don't want to see that happen.”

Angela wiped the tears off her face and looked at her mother fiercely. “I know why Daddy was so mad at you that time. I know now.”

“Angie, it's things between a man and a woman that a little girl just can't understand.”

“Well, I know. And I'm not so little. I understand more than you think I do.”

“Oh, child, you think you do. That's how it is. But you don't know. Not yet.”

Angela looked at her, her eyes hard. “I know what I need to know.”

Mildred looked at her daughter and saw her slipping away. Not a thing she could do. She'd lost the right seven years ago in William's arms. “Well, just don't be out back of that school with any boys anymore. I ain't having that in my house. You understand.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

As soon as she left the room, she heard the tinny sound of the record player being turned on. Some of that Motown music Angie liked so much filled the air. Mildred stood alone on the other side of her daughter's door, and listened. But she didn't understand.

A
NGELA WAS TWENTY, SHE HAD FINISHED HIGH
school and started secretarial school. She was the best typist in her class. She never stopped shocking her mother. She had long curvy legs and a neck you couldn't help but think about and hips that came straight from Mother Nature and invited some man to touch them. Mildred was her mother, not someone aspiring to be her lover, and even she could see how beautiful her daughter was. It scared her. She could see how this one was bound and determined to make her own way, and that her way wouldn't be in Tulsa. Otis and Jolene had been grown and gone since Angie was sixteen. They each had children of their own and Angela was still here. She walked down Archer Avenue as though it were her personal property. And Mildred couldn't do a thing to stop her.

 

“Mama, you better get down here. We gonna be late.”

“I'm comin' girl. That picture ain't going nowhere.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You said that last week and we was late. Come
on
, Mama. It's Katharine Hepburn.” Sometimes it seemed like their love for movies in general and Katharine Hepburn in particular was all they had in common. Today they were going to see
The Lion in Winter
down at the Dreamland. They still went every Saturday afternoon, even though the theater was dirty and smelled of rancid oil and the part of town the theater was in was not the safest and the movies had often been playing everywhere else long, long before they got to the Dreamland. It kept them together, though. They didn't talk about it, but they both valued that.

Mildred didn't really understand
The Lion in Winter
. Oh, Kate looked good like always, her voice the sound of royalty and her face glowing, even with her hair all messed up. But everybody kept talking so sharp and brittle in sentences that no one would ever really use. And then that boy turning out to be queer and with the king of France no less. Pictures weren't what they used to be. She expressed as much to Angela as they walked out into the evening sun. “Oh, Mama, you've got to change with the times. Everything's changing. Can't you see that? That movie was supposed to be funny. And when those two guys—well, some guys are like that. So are some girls. You know that.”

“Sure I know that. But that don't mean it got to be all up in your face in a movie. We don't got to see every crazy thing people do in this world, do we?”

“Mama, you so old-fashioned.”

“Just got good sense, it seem to me. Seem like most folks done lost it. Don't nobody know how to act anymore.”

Angela was silent. “Well, I liked it,” she said after a while. “They was kind of crazy, but I liked it.”

Mildred eyed her daughter speculatively. “You would.”

As beautiful as Angela was, the only thing Mildred had ever said to her about sex was “Keep your dress down and your panties up.” Even after their confrontation over Angie's first kiss, Mildred still couldn't find a way to talk to her daughter—even knowing what she knew about loving a man, or loving two men. How could she explain that to her baby? She couldn't. So she didn't. She didn't say anything. Mildred could almost see the wheels turning, see Angela working things out in her mind.

 

Angela had been a fairly good student her senior year of high school. She was president of the Dramatic Society, had a solid B-average (didn't want to be too smart, scare off the boys), and spent plenty of time helping the sick at Greenwood Baptist like her mother before her. Since the kissing incident when she was fourteen, she'd appeared to lead the life of a modest girl. But Mildred couldn't help but remember that and, going back further, remember the way her eyes glowed like candles when they saw the revival of
Carmen Jones
together when she was ten and how that child pestered, pestered, pestered to be allowed to wear a flower behind her ear and a red skirt until Mildred lost all patience and shouted that no daughter of hers was going to walk the streets of Tulsa dressed like a common whore. Angie's eyes got big and filled with tears and she never asked again. But Mildred knew that Angela had never forgotten the easy power in Carmen's walk, the sway of joy in her hips; even if she did get her comeuppance in the end. She had so much fun before it came. So when she finally heard about Angie going too far with Bobby Ware, she wasn't entirely surprised. She knew she had to put a stop to it—but she wasn't surprised.

At first she'd been happy when Angie started keeping company with Bobby a few years before. He was a nice boy with a good family. But then she started hearing things; just little things at church first, but finally Jolene (of course) confirmed the whispers. Folks had seen Angela going down in Bobby's car to the edge of town, where it was well known that everyone went to park. She'd been seen emerging from his car with her hair mussed and her eyes shining. “Everybody knows about it, Mama. Folks talking all over town,” said Jolene.

So she waited in her daughter's bedroom after school that day, as she should have done long ago, for her daughter to come home. But this time, resolve was in her heart. This time, she'd be strong—the way she should have been all along.

“Angela, I've heard tell that you've been seen all over the place with Bobby Ware and not just keeping company. You've been down where folks go to park and under the bleachers with him. I've been hearing things. Are they true?”

Angela didn't say anything.

“Young lady, I am speaking to you. Did you hear my question?”

“Yes, ma'am. I heard it.”

“Well, then I expect an answer and I expect it now.”

Angela looked straight into her mother's eyes. Her back was that of a soldier on parade. “Yes, ma'am. To tell the truth, I broke up with him two weeks ago—not that I told you. But before that, I've been with him in his car, under the bleachers, every chance I get—for years. That surely was me.”

Mildred covered her heart with her hand like Anne Baxter in
All About Eve
and sank onto Angela's bed. “What on earth were you thinking, acting like that with that boy?” she gasped.

“Mama, believe me. You don't want to know,” she said.

Her mother looked at her, transfixed. “What. Did. You. Just. Say.”

“I said that you don't want to know what I've been doing with Bobby Ware. But I'll tell you—it's been good.” Her eyes were unwavering.

Her mother got up and moved forward one step, then two. Her hand, when it hit Angela's face, made a dull, flat crack. “I will not have a whore in this house,” said Mildred. She did not raise her voice.

Angela touched her cheek for a minute, but she didn't cry. “You didn't raise a whore, Mama.” She turned away.

Mildred spoke to her back. “That's fine you broke up with him. If I hear another word about you behaving this way with anyone, you can pack your bags. You old enough to make your own way. It's time you do it if that is how you're going to act. I will not have a slut in my house.” She turned and walked out without another word.

She did not stop walking until she had reached the backyard. Once the floor was no longer under her feet, she stopped and dropped to her knees. The ground was moist beneath them. The palm of her hand still stung. She had never slapped her daughter before. Angela's eyes had been so murderously cold. But there was something else in them too. A departure. In that moment, Mildred knew that Angela was lost to her. That sooner rather than later, her daughter would be gone and she'd be left with her husband, who was kind to her, and the ashy taste of her memories and the dull glitter of her movies, and that would be the end of it. She knelt in the dirt, grateful no one could see. She knelt in the dirt and cried.

 

Angela sat at her father's right hand, her mother at his left. He led grace. “Lord, bless these gifts we are about to receive. For this and all the fruits of Thy hand we are humbly grateful. Amen.” Amen, the two women echoed. The room was still with anger. Johnny Lee must have felt it, but he just started talking about how crazy old Etta Atkins came in to the drugstore today looking for her long-dead husband, something she did once a week. Both women laughed, like always, but there was ice between them.

Johnny Lee didn't need to know about what had happened this afternoon between them. He would talk to Angela about woman stuff; he was easier about it than most men. But this? Mildred hadn't seen any need to drag him into it. She understood her daughter well enough.

Her stomach dipped, remembering William walking up the stairs of the Dreamland in front of her. She knew how you could get. So that you'd do anything to have those hands on you again. But she knew what Angela didn't—how it ended with you crying alone in the dirt. She ate a small, ladylike forkful of her mashed potatoes.

Angela sat, eating, not talking. She was so beautiful, Mildred thought, so beautiful. When she was a little girl she always had one ribbon untied, her knees dirty, the look in her eyes she had now, as if she were seeing something you couldn't see. Angela didn't look like a girl who'd been arguing with her mother. She looked like a woman who'd made a decision. Mildred longed to touch her hand, to feel her daughter's skin next to hers. But she didn't reach out. She just laughed at the funny part of her husband's story. The same story she'd heard a thousand times. And continued to eat.

Angela made the first move. That night before bed, she kissed her father, then her mother. She said to Mildred, her voice almost inaudible, “I'm sorry, Mama.” Mildred gave her a sharp look, then took her hand. “You know I only want what's best for you, Angie. I don't want you making mistakes you can't fix.”

“I know that, Mama.”

“You go on to bed now, girl. I'll see you in the morning.”

“OK, Mama.” Angela stood stiffly for a moment. “I love you, Mama.”

“Child, I know that. I love you too. Go on to bed now.” Her daughter made her way up the stairs, an angel ascending.

 

In the morning, they found a rumpled, empty bed, this note on her pillow. “Dear Mama and Daddy, I know you want the best for me and you think that if I finish secretary school, that will be the best for me. But I need something bigger than that. Times are changing and I know I got to change with them. I will be safe. I have money and will find a place to stay. I'll write when I'm settled. Please don't come after me. I'll tell you where I'm going once I'm there. I'm grown now and I'll be all right. I know what I'm doing. Love, Angie.”

T
HE MORNING THEY FOUND THAT NOTE, JOHNNY
Lee stood, holding the schoolgirl sheet of notebook paper with its ripped spiral-bound edges and read it over and over, as if reading it closely enough would make it say something else. After a long time, he turned to Mildred and said, “Did you know she was gonna leave like this?”

Mildred thought of her daughters resolute back going up the stairs, the feel of her soft cheek recoiling under the slap. “No. How on earth would I know that?”

He didn't move. “Well, now what we gon' do? She ain't nothing but a baby. We don't even know where she's gone.”

“She's over eighteen. The law say she's a woman. We can't get her back. Just got to hope she call.”

He crumpled the note. His shoulders drooped in on his chest. He seemed to have aged since they came into the room. “What's our girl gonna do out there alone? People gone crazy these days.”

“No crazier than they ever been,” she said.

He stared at her. Shook his head slowly, bearlike. “You ain't the woman I married. You done got so cold. Your own daughter gone, and you just as cold as ice.”

But he was wrong. Her heart was crushed to dust. Again. She couldn't even tell him. It had been so very long since she had really talked to anyone. William took her voice away with him. For years now, her heart had been dust in her chest. The only time she felt alive was at the movies. Or looking at the book William had left her. And sometimes at night, standing in the yard while Johnny Lee slept, looking up at the riot of stars overhead.

It started on a night like that. After Angie left, she rarely slept more than three or four hours. She roamed the house like an old ghost, drinking warm milk and trying to sleep. Often, she found her feet leading her out to the backyard. Johnny Lee never woke up. He slept like the dead. She stood, sometimes for an hour at a time, gazing overhead, looking at the sky unobscured by smog. She remembered her mama's face looking up at the blue sky, her eyes wide and sightless. She remembered the way her daddy clutched her hand on the day he died. Each knuckle was as big around as a walnut. His hand felt like a claw, his eyes rimmed in navy blue around the dark brown. He said, lying there on his deathbed, “Don't you never trust a white man. They ain't never to be trusted. Never.” Those were his last words. No matter how hard he tried to forgive, the last thought he ever had was how much they had hurt him. But sometimes Mildred didn't think at all. Just gazed heavenward, the air resting on her like a caress.