We Are All Welcome Here (16 page)

After she was settled inside, sitting in her wheelchair in the living room, Brooks set his gift on her lap. I opened it for her, and she stared wide-eyed, smiling, and then had Brooks put all three pillbox hats on her, one stacked up on top of the other. She thanked him profusely, though I could tell she wondered why in the world he had made such a purchase. I did not enlighten her.

Then Peacie went off to do chores, and I started upstairs. Brooks was finally left alone with my mother, something I knew he’d been waiting for, and for once I didn’t begrudge him the pleasure of her company. “How’s Dell?” she asked.

I stood still at the landing to listen for Brooks’s response. After a weighted pause, I heard him say, “He’s fine.” The tone of his voice made me believe he was hanging his head, and I felt sorry for him. But I resolved to go and see Dell later that afternoon to let him know my mother was back—I didn’t think Brooks would be in any hurry to do so.

When I came downstairs, Brooks had gone, and Peacie and my mother were in the kitchen, talking in low voices. “If he don’t get killed, I might shoot him myself,” Peacie said.

“Does he call every day?” my mother asked.

“Sometime he do and sometime he don’t,” Peacie said. “Either way make me mad. I don’t know why he got to march, he doing enough with the Freedom Schools.”

“There are injunctions prohibiting demonstrations now,” my mother said.

“That’s right,” Peacie said. “But they doing them anyway. And any Negro participate or even watch can get arrested. Now how I’m gon’ get him out if he get arrested?”

“He won’t get arrested,” my mother said. “He’s too smart for that. And too charming.”

“He get arrested, he can rot in jail,” Peacie said, “and I find me a new boyfriend don’t go running off and get in trouble on purpose, act like a fool. I find me a young man, take me dancing.”

My mother remained tactfully silent, and I made my presence known, coming into the room and asking what was for lunch.

Peacie looked over at me. “How those broken hands of yours coming along?” she asked.

T
he next afternoon, while my mother was napping, I sat at the kitchen table working on a scene for Suralee and my new play, a drama involving the murder of a dress-shop owner. We’d been benignly arguing over who got to play the killer. Peacie came up from the basement and asked me to go into town for detergent. “We still have some,” I told her.

“We need more,” Peacie said.

“There was almost half a box this morning; I saw it. There’s got to be enough left for today.”
Strangled by a scarf?
I was thinking.
Beaten about the head with a pocketbook?

Peacie dragged a chair out from under the table and sat close to me. She snatched away the paper I was writing on and crinkled it up.

“Hey!” I reached out to take the paper back.

She threw it on the floor, then leaned forward and spoke quietly. “Diana Dunn, you made of stubbornness, you know that? That’s all you are. You ain’t got no guts inside, just stubbornness. ’Fore I die, maybe you cooperate on one single thing. ’Fore I die, I like to say, ‘Diana, would you bring in the sheets on the line?’ and you say, ‘Yes, ma’am, I do it right now on account of I
owe
it to you.’” Tears sprung up suddenly in her eyes and began to roll down her face; she brushed them aside angrily. “‘I owe it to you, for all the things you do for me. Things I ain’t even
know
about.’” She struck out at the air and began to cry harder, and I sat watching her, slump-shouldered and miserable. I would have felt better if she’d made contact, if she’d hit me.

“Someday I like you to know all I done give up, take care you and your mother. I could have left here long time ago, me and LaRue both, but I stay on account of y’all. And this what I get in return, some Jesus-size argument for ever’ single thing I say. You ’bout wore me out, Diana.”

“I’ll go to the store,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

“You think you—”

The phone rang and Peacie leapt up for it. LaRue hadn’t called in three days; I hoped this was him now. But the call was for my mother. “Yes, this the right number, but she be napping right now,” Peacie said. She pulled a man’s-sized handkerchief from her apron pocket and pressed it against her nose, sniffing. She listened intently, then straightened and said, “Hold on.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, “Did your mother enter a contest?”

I nodded, then whispered back, “I entered for her. She doesn’t know.”

Peacie looked at me for a long moment. Then she said, “She done won second prize.”

I stood, my heart pounding. Peacie pressed her hand to her mouth, and from behind it came a high-pitched squeal. She closed her eyes and took in a breath, smoothed down the front of her apron. Then, into the phone, she said, “Could you please wait just one minute? I’m gon’ wake her up.”

Peacie held the phone out to me and in an overly controlled voice said, “I’m gon’ go tell her.”

I held the phone pressed to my breast in a mix of impatience and fear. What if the call got disconnected? What if you lost the prize if you didn’t accept it soon enough after they called? What if there was a giant ticking clock on a wall, moving closer to them calling the next person on the list? Then my insides sagged. This was a joke. I put the phone up to my ear to listen. I heard nothing. “Suralee?” I said.

“Yes, hello?” an unfamiliar voice said. “Is this Paige Dunn?” I said no, but she was coming, just one second, she’d be right there, could they hold on just one more second? Then, after Peacie pushed my mother up to the phone, I pressed the receiver to her ear.

“Hello?” she said. “Yes, this is Paige Dunn.” Then she looked up at me while she said, “You…you’re kidding. You’re kidding, right?” She listened some more, the color rising in her face, gave out our address, listened some more, and then said good-bye. “We won twenty-five hundred dollars,” she said. “We won
twenty-five hundred dollars
!”

“Lord have mercy!” Peacie shrieked, and I pounded on the kitchen table so hard I hurt my hand.

“They want to come and take my picture tomorrow,” my mother said. “All I have to do is sign some papers and they’ll give me the check.” Something occurred to her. “Won’t
they
be surprised!” she said.

I
got up before Peacie arrived, and crept downstairs to my mother’s bedroom. She was awake, and she smiled at me. “Come here,” she said. “I’m so excited I hardly slept. You know what I’m going to buy you? I’m going to buy you a canopied bed. And a whole new wardrobe. And any game you want. And I’m going to buy myself a Royal electric typewriter. I’ll press the keys with a pencil.”

I climbed into her bed and lay beside her. She kissed the top of my head. Her breath was terrible—we’d had garlic bread with last night’s dinner. “Peacie needs to brush your teeth really good this morning,” I said.

She opened her mouth wide and blew down on me. “Yours isn’t much better,” she said.

I blew back into her face and we laughed.

“
And
we’re going to hire a nighttime caretaker,” she said.

“Can we get Lay’s potato chips now?” I asked, and my mother said, “Nothing but.”

“What are you going to wear for the picture?” I asked.

“I don’t know, what do you think?”

“Something blue,” I said.

“Okay. Maybe my blue blouse. And if they can take the picture from above the vent hose up, I could look normal. What are you going to wear?”

“Me? I don’t know. They’re not taking my picture.”

“They might. They ought to. You’re the one who really won.”

“Yeah, but don’t tell them,” I said.

“Believe me!”

I reached over and picked up one of my mother’s plaster shells. She had two, so that one could air out when she wore the other. I laid it over myself. “I think I’ll wear this,” I said. “I’ll put flowers in the vent hole.”

“Take that off,” my mother said.

I smiled. “Not my style?”

“Take it off!” she said, with a ferocity that stunned me.

I laid the shell aside, then said, “I’m not going to get polio, you know.”

“That’s right,” my mother said. “And you won’t ever put that shell on again, either.” She looked over at the bedside clock. “Wonder where Peacie is? She’s never late. And especially today, she needs to be on time.”

“I’ll get you started,” I said.

My mother hesitated, then said, “I need the bedpan.”

“Okay.”

“Put it under me and then go out of the room,” she said, and I said I knew. “Give Peacie a call,” my mother said. “Maybe she overslept.”

I went into the kitchen and dialed Peacie’s number. There was no answer. “She’s on the way,” I called.

I felt bad for Peacie. It would hurt her pride to arrive late. I’d pretend I didn’t notice. I opened the cupboard to survey the breakfast cereals. Soon we’d be able to buy any kind we wanted. I felt a rush of excitement close to a convulsion, and then my mother called, “Diana? Done.”

I only smiled.

An hour later there was still no sign of Peacie. My mother told me to call Mrs. Gruder, but I said I could take care of things. I could bathe my mother; I could feed her; I could dress her. When it came time to transfer her to the wheelchair, I could even do that if I had to. “Go over and see if Riley could help,” my mother said. “Tell him I’ll be ready to be moved in an hour.”

When I knocked on Riley’s door, I heard him moving about inside. Then the door opened a crack and he peered out. I held up my hand. “Hey.”

“You got an emergency?” He was wearing his underwear, and his hair was sticking straight up.

“No, sir,” I said. “But we were wondering if you could just help get my mother up into the wheelchair in about an hour.”

“She going to the hospital again?”

“No, sir. It’s just that Peacie hasn’t come yet this morning, and I need a little help transferring her.”

“What happened to Peacie?”

“Nothing. She just had a doctor’s appointment.” I wasn’t sure why I was lying. But I trusted the impulse.

I went back home and got my mother and myself ready. I did a pretty good job on her makeup; she said it was as good as Peacie did, though both of us knew it wasn’t. She let me wear some of her pink lipstick, and I tied one of her scarves in my hair. We looked as good as we could, but beneath this veneer, our worry was beginning to show.

When the doorbell rang, I ushered in two middle-aged men dressed in suits: Jack Peterson, the photographer, and Bill Hartman, the representative assigned to deliver to my mother a check for that astonishing amount. I could tell that they were affected by the surroundings—their soft, nervous smiles, their inability to maintain eye contact. I was always reminded of our poverty whenever someone from outside our element first came into our house, was always newly ashamed. When the men came into the dining room to meet my mother, the photographer nearly dropped his camera; it quite literally slid down in his hand. But then my mother smiled.

At three in the afternoon, Peacie finally showed up. My mother was back in bed, though awake, and I was sitting beside her, the check in my hand. “I’m sorry,” Peacie began, and my mother said, “It’s all right. It’s fine. What happened?”

Peacie sat in the chair by my mother’s bed and stared into her lap for a long while. Then she looked up and said, “LaRue in jail. He beat up pretty bad. Somebody in there with him got out, and LaRue ax him come tell me. They wouldn’t let LaRue call nobody. They accuse him hiding a concealed weapon. He ain’t had no weapon! They just round up the marchers they can catch and use them teach the ones get away a lesson. LaRue hurt bad in the stomach and the back, and he can’t see out one eye, but he just sitting there, ain’t no doctor come to see him. He ain’t hardly eating. He peeing blood. I got to go there, I just hope he ain’t died, time I get there. I got some things I got to say. I just want to see him.” She swallowed hugely. “Now, I called my sister, she can’t take care of you. I called some other folks, too. I’m sorry, Paige, I can’t find nobody. But I got to go.”

“Of course you do,” my mother said. “But Peacie, there must be bail set. We can get him out.”