Gumbo: A Celebration of African American Writing Part 24

The doctor had already told them that it would be days before he could say one way or the other. To October this meant that he didn't want to tell them. And so she said that they should keep a vigil. Twenty-four hours every day, one of them should be right at Aunt Frances's side. Panic took hold of October every time she pictured Auntie wandering in the Valley of the Shadow. She looked at her-pale against the white sheets, slack and doughy-and prayed. Here it was now, Bible wisdom rolling off her own tongue and none of it went anywhere. "G.o.d is love." If this was true, how could G.o.d let things like this happen? "Thy will be done." Surely suffering wasn't it. "For everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven." Didn't October already have her season of grief, or was this just a continuation? But she prayed anyway.

Vigil it was. For three days they all took turns watching Aunt Frances breathe, talking to her absent eyes when they were open, catnapping when she slept. Visitors couldn't stop coming-from the church, the paper mill, the hospital, the neighborhood. Some of Aunt Frances's bywords being proven. Reaping the kindnesses she had sown. And there were all the women from the Negro Ladies' League, too-a loosely gathered group that collected food and clothing for the poor. October recognized some of their faces.

The League had always left a sour taste in October's mouth, because her aunties had pushed it so hard. When she and Vergie were girls, the biggest notable event of the year had been the weeklong annual celebration for the Children's Home, and the Negro Ladies' League was always front and center. A season didn't end that hadn't seen those ladies-led by Frances, with Maude Cooper and their nieces-tramping around the Hopewell burial mounds or a Tec.u.mseh site with a ragtag flock of orphans.

Although Aunt Frances had never understood why, October had hated the orphans, and she suspected that Vergie had hated them, too. It made sense, when she thought about it. Vergie and October were orphans, too. But strange ones. Different. They knew it and the orphans knew it. Aunt Frances and Aunt Maude alone had had it in their heads that doing things with the orphans could somehow be good for their two girls. Auntie never let them forget that the two of them were better off because somebody wanted them. And as October sat watching Auntie breathe, she conceded that Auntie had been right.

Toward the end of October's s.h.i.+ft on the third day, Aunt Frances opened her eyes again and made a humming noise. Nothing in particular. October took her hand and told her, "Try to rest, Auntie. The doctor says you need to have rest and quiet."

Again Auntie hummed, but this time with an edge to it. Gently, as if she were lifting a wilting flower, October lifted Auntie's head and held a gla.s.s of water to her lips. Not so good. Auntie moaned, "Um-umm," meaning no, tried to work her mouth, tried to form some impossible word. Her eyes fixed on the bowl of crushed ice on the nightstand.

"Oh," October said. She took a tiny chip of ice from the bowl and spooned it into Auntie's mouth. Then dabbed her lips with a tissue.

She sat in her chair, and Aunt Frances lay silent but with eyes trying to say it all.

"Remember the chickenpox?" October said. "How you rubbed my blisters with ice?"

With the slightest pressure, Aunt Frances pressed her fingers into October's hand. Yes, she did remember.

"You don't have to stay awake," October said. "It's all right to go back to sleep. I'm not going anywhere."

She heard herself say it. Aunt Frances might not want to close her eyes for fear she was going somewhere.

But her eyes soon drooped close again, her grip fell, and October found herself breathing with her aunt's shallow rhythm.

Tallies. Wins. Losses. Aunt Frances had been good to her, period. And she owed her. The bad things always come up at the worst times. October was bound to remember the worst storm that raged between them, when she was seventeen and h.e.l.l-bent on changing her name. Those years before, and even right then in the hospital room, she believed it was one of the most important things she had ever done. But at seventeen she had been righteous with a capital R. Left no room for Auntie to bless or curse.

Auntie had challenged her, October had prevailed. But the arguments had left her with one regret. There at the bedside, looking down on the fading beacon of her early life, October remembered standing at their front doorway once, with her shortie coat over her arm, big as day. And Aunt Frances saying something final, like "Girl, if you go out that door, I'll make you sorry you were ever born." And October had spewed a perfect cruelty about spinsters-an easy target: Something along the lines of Aunt Frances and Aunt Maude having no life until she and Vergie had come to live with them, and how they had not wanted them to have a life either.

What really bothered October that afternoon at the hospital was her remembrance of Aunt Frances's face when-with purest venom-October had proceeded to take away any hold Aunt Frances might have thought she had.

"You're not our mother," she had told her aunt. "You could never be my mother. You didn't sign anything legal to keep us, and I don't have to mind somebody who's just a relative."

And she had fairly pranced out the door.

And since that first incident of regret, she had done much worse-brought untold worries and hurts to her auntie's door.

That day at the hospital she thought back and saw her life as if it were a play that had started with one single event and then gotten blown every which way by the whims of G.o.d and men. That day at the hospital, she fully realized that life as she knew it had started with the death of Carrie. And wasn't that the way grief worked-throwing you back to what caused what, and who was to blame, and how much you had lost?

Over all the years that she had let the event begin to flood her mind and quickly evaporate, October had come up with a hundred ways to describe it. The word "murder" had never fit. The drama of "tragic death" took away the impact. "Father's crime"-too detached. "Family's shame"-too vague. "A man's insanity"-yes. "A woman's nightmare"-even closer. But nothing ever fit the way "The Killing" fit. It brought her down to the nitty-gritty, brought home just what their father had brought down on their heads.

October had been five years old-just five-a little girl with no idea that there were layers to what was happening. Over the years she had scribbled things, words on bits of paper, trying to get it right: a wall of water cras.h.i.+ng against two new sapling trees. A gyre of wind sucking air into its spin and dipping down to touch the great and small thing that had been their lives. A natural disaster. How terrible it must have been for children-this was how she had always felt any emotion around it: as a secondhand sympathy for the children she and Vergie had been. Whenever she called herself grieving, it had been for them as they had been then, two young girls.

It didn't seem logical, but for October the public fact of the killing seemed to affect her life more than the private pain of losing her two parents did. Having to be his daughter-the daughter of a man who killed somebody. Having to carry that name and that label meant shame on you. Are you an evil person, too? And she and Vergie had grown up without so much as a second cousin to show them what a man was. Fascination comes from that. Leads to all kinds of craziness.

Franklin Brown had been the source of everything that had been wrong in their lives. But October couldn't say that she actually hated him. "Hate" didn't touch all the things she felt about him. Maybe disgust began to describe her feelings. And sadness, too, over the terror that Carrie must have gone through. Sadness over Carrie's heart that must have been broken at the thought of dying. October's sympathy, though, always gave way to the wish that Franklin Brown had somehow come to realize to the nth degree what he had done, and then that he had been forced to live with it until his last breath.

Some of her vengeful wishes came from being tainted by someone else's crime. At nine, and still named Lillian, she was a gangly little girl with thick ropes of plaited hair. The white freckle that was supposed to have turned into a mole had become a dime-spot blemish on her cheek.

Vergie, on the other hand, had become a thirteen-year-old whose rounded heft refused to be disguised as ordinary ripening. For Vergie, the burden of child-witness to The Killing had worked itself out in pounds, or so they had all thought-she was older, she had suffered more deeply than her little sister, who had been too young to understand.

They were sisters, though. Where there are sisters, the flame of contention smolders, and difference is the very air it craves. They were way past the need for being baby-sat, way past the desire to nose around the landscape of their aunties' rooms. With the way she kept her closet and the files of papers in the cedar chest under that high bed of hers, Aunt Frances had already become the General, law and order.

They knew every piece of paper in the chest by heart. Early school drawings, birth certificates, baptism certificates, attendance certificates, bank papers-all that. And whenever they wanted, they could touch the small white Bible with the crumbly clipping, the Herald obituary that announced Carrie's death. Inside the back cover of the Bible, the black ink and back-slanted scrawl of "Carrie Cooper" had faded to brown.

The closet, too, they knew: Starched white uniforms hung like guards over the few other dresses Aunt Frances owned; paired white duty shoes toed a straight line. The bureau drawers gave up old-style white cotton stockings on one side and brown cotton stockings-hideous, October always thought-on the other. And, like a monument to an old dream, a solitary bottle of toilet water-precious in cut gla.s.s-on her bureau.

Aunt Maude's s.p.a.ce had nothing like order. Lounging, rummaging seemed fine in her room. October remembered how Aunt Maude's clothes-drab to plain-had always been draped in layers over the chair in the corner and piled on her bedpost. She and Vergie always found a coffee cup sitting with the lotion and toilet water and combs and brushes on top of her bureau. Snips of newspaper and scribbled lists made a raggedy fringe around her mirror. And candy. Always a tin full of peppermint, b.u.t.terscotch, lemon drops on her closet shelf, under her one black hat.

At nine and thirteen, October and Vergie had not outgrown their habit of after-school sweets. School-weary and famished, they had just finished helping Mrs. Hopp make rag rugs for the Children's Home one day and raced through the front door straight up to Aunt Maude's closet. They sat on Aunt Maude's bed, Vergie with the nice candy tin on her lap, and they raked through hard candy for best and next best.

October liked b.u.t.terscotch, and there was one, but Vergie was faster. She popped it into her mouth before October could say mine. That gave them a way to spend the next hour. They could just bicker until October decided that nothing at all was better than settling for the sour lemon drops, which were all that was left.

Later, while they piddled with homework, Vergie went down to the kitchen and came back with a crisp green apple, cut supposedly in half, and a little pile of salt on a piece of waxed paper to sprinkle on the apple. She placed the smaller half-a peace offering nonetheless-on October's bed. "That's yours," she said.

October ignored it. Vergie was hungry, but she dipped-and-bit, dipped-and-bit slowly, until hers was all gone. She kept eyeing the half on October's bed, piddled and glared for a while.

"You know, apples start rotting as soon as the air hits them," Vergie said. "You'd better eat yours before it turns brown." To which October answered, "Let it rot-I don't want it." She didn't want apple, she wanted b.u.t.terscotch.

Vergie wanted apple. "Okay, then," she said. "Starve if you want to." And she s.n.a.t.c.hed up the other half and chomped off a huge bite.

What happened next had to do with the fact that each year, the Negro Ladies' League had sponsored an annual Children's Home trip, which The Call-the only national Negro newspaper-dubbed a "Noteworthy Excursion," to the zoo in Columbus. And each year until October and Vergie were too far into their teens, they were forced to "set an example" by sitting like b.u.mps on a log with the orphans on the rented bus, eating sh.e.l.led and salted peanuts.

There had been this boy, Clyde, a pipsqueak, but Vergie liked him, orphan or not. She had written his name on page 100 of all her books. And there had been this girl, Lila, fearless and feared. Lila was Vergie's age and had run away several times. "Seen the world"-undoubtedly all of downtown Chillicothe and the river. Wore makeup and smoked cigarettes, mostly b.u.t.ts.

During the zoo outing the year she was thirteen, Vergie had made eyes enough at the Clyde boy to convince him that she would walk over a hundred miles of broken gla.s.s barefooted if he would smile her way. With the rest of the orphans, Vergie and October had spent the day swatting flies, licking their shaved ice, looking at the same old animals, all of whom had silly names like Tiny the Elephant, and Gertie, the Hippopotamus. On the bus back to the Home that afternoon, Clyde stuck a wad of gum to the back of Vergie's seat. On a piece of paper he scribbled "Gertie" and stuck the paper to the gum. Hearing all the giggles, Vergie turned around to see what else but Clyde, smiling at her. As the moment hung and trembled, Vergie smiled back. And then the moment hit and shattered. Vergie saw the paper. The orphan runaway Lila smacked Clyde with her fist. Too late.

"Devastated" didn't come close. For three days Aunt Frances and Aunt Maude had cooked and spread banquets for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and Vergie had gagged and cried through them all. Aunt Frances had cursed the ground stupid Clyde walked on, telling Vergie that the boy was a heathen, an orphan with no home training. And Vergie cried into another day. They shook their heads, wrung their hands. Vergie cried into a second night. Over the third day, October had had the good idea that Vergie might be calmer if she had a new skirt to wear, a skirt like the ones Lila wore. October had just the right length of material, too; Aunt Frances had been saving it for a dress. That very day, Aunt Maude and Aunt Frances and October had pieced it together, and finally Vergie's tears dried up.

And so when Vergie gobbled up October's half of the apple that day a few months later, it was the strategic windfall that can bless all warring children. It would be years before October was able to understand how anger works. Why, in her meanest, cold-blooded fury, she had spat out "Gertie!" in Vergie's face.

Right away, though, October could see that she had hit her mark. Vergie's face began to break. But this time Vergie pulled herself together fast.

She arranged her face, lifted her chin ever so slightly, leveled her eyes at October, and said, "I'd rather be Gertie than a spotted Lillian any day."

The words weren't infected with any fatal poison. Some people had extra fingers, some had crossed eyes, some had had polio and would be crippled forever. October's white spot would turn brown again someday. She was fine-her feelings weren't hurt.

Oh, but Vergie had her. With lips all curled, now, Vergie had repeated, "I wouldn't be caught dead with that name." And when she saw that October still did not catch on, Vergie blurted, "Stupid. You're so stupid you don't even know where your sorry name came from."

October's face must have remained blank. She had never thought about it, really. Didn't get the point.

Hand-on-her-hip, Vergie had rained it down. "I'm named after Grandma Vergie Cooper," she said. And then the d.a.m.ning question: "Who do you think you're named after?"

Again, what did October know?

"Your father's people," Vergie said, quivering with the pleasure of having it out. "Poppa's sister who raised him. Her name was Lillian."

Dumbfounded, October called up reason to her defense. "You're a lie," she said. She threatened to tell Auntie. Any loose reference to Franklin Brown-his person or possible kin, his crime or punishment-any little remember-that-time about their early lives in Cleveland, their suspicions, old wishes, or nightmares had always brought a swift and unmitigated bawling-out from Auntie and Aunt Maude, too. October was sure that Vergie had made it up.

And then Vergie had spilled out unbelievable details. "His mother died and his big sister raised him and her name was Lillian. Ask Auntie. They used to live in Tennessee."

"Liar," October said, folding fast.

Vergie got louder. "Ask Auntie. She knows. Everybody knows. That's where your spot came from. No-good crooks and s.l.u.tty women-that's who you are."

Hands now covering her ears, October couldn't listen. How many times had her aunts told her that they were decent girls, that they had come from good people? How many times had they warned "their girls" away from "low-life" people who hung around the barbershop on Keane Street because "our girls" are better than that?

October threw back at Vergie, "We never even knew those people," trying to sound sure instead of whipped.

But Vergie was on. "Yes, we did," but there must have been some doubt because she went on with, "Even if we didn't, you still got their . . ." and she drawled, "Lil-yan."

"Shut up!"

"Lil-yan," Vergie slurred. "Lil- . . . Lil-yan . . ."

October swung at her, blindly, and her fist caught the corner of Vergie's mouth. Vergie's teeth cut the inside of her lip. She bled red blood.

Shocked them both for a split second. Then Vergie ran to the bathroom and, when she saw the blood, wailed like a trapped puppy dog. October went after her, but by then Vergie would have no apologizing.

"Get out!" she screamed and locked herself in the bathroom. October stood at the bathroom door, saying "I'm sorry" to the frame, but her words were way past lost.

Things might have gone better if Aunt Frances had been the first to arrive home to straighten out sister-squabbling quickly. But Frances had had the late s.h.i.+ft at the hospital and wouldn't be in until midnight. And so as hours pa.s.sed, the incident ballooned into a crime, like night swelling from a single shadow across the bedroom floor.

Aunt Maude got off from the mill at five, and Vergie burst out of the bathroom and stumbled down the stairs, greeting her with a garbled story, plenty of tears, and a swollen lip. Aunt Maude had calmed and soothed and whimpered with her and dressed her mouth with Mercurochrome. October had sat alone in their bedroom, waiting for whatever was to come next.

Aunt Maude, her face flat, opened the door and stood looking at October for a long time, and then her eyes welled up.

"What are we going to do?" she said, as if they were all lost. She looked into the air for an answer, then closed the door.

No one ate dinner.

Somewhere in what seemed the middle of the night, October was shaken awake, to Aunt Frances' cast-iron "Get up, Lillian, and get dressed."

She had been expecting anything. Vergie had not slept in her bed. Aunt Maude's voice was an all-night murmur behind her door. Starkly awake, October had gotten herself up and dressed, shoes and all.

"Get your coat!" Aunt Frances yelled from downstairs and October did as she was told.

Frances Cooper-fully prepared in nurse whites and her navy-blue cape with the red lining-waited at the front door. Aunt Maude stood at the top of the stairs in her nightgown and watched as October and Aunt Frances went out into the night. October followed Auntie across the yard to the Hopps', where Mr. Hopp waited on his front porch. Cold night. Cold enough to see his breath huff.

"Okay, Miss Cooper," he said to Auntie. "If you're sure this is what you want to do, come on."

Mr. Hopp worked for the city, although his exact job was a question October could not have answered at the time. Whenever he left for work she had heard keys jangling at the hip of his coveralls. This night the keys jangled, too. Silence like the cemetery rode with her in Mr. Hopp's long, low Hudson to the downtown Chillicothe she had seldom seen at night. Corner lamps, cold and glaring, made sharp shadows against the still buildings, empty streets.

Mr. Hopp pulled up in front of city hall and sat still, looked at the building a while, then went around the block, into the alley, and stopped behind the building. Fumbled with his keys. Where were they going? October couldn't imagine what punishment lay waiting-she knew only that Aunt Frances had thought it up, and it would be pretty bad.

"Okay, let's see what might be waitin in there for this one," Mr. Hopp said. Aunt Frances got out of the car and held the back door for October.

"Come on," she said.

Long hallways waited. And echoes. Two white policemen took Mr. Hopp aside to talk, then left. Aunt Frances followed close on Mr. Hopp's heels and October followed close on hers, down another long hallway that led to an iron door. Mr. Hopp unlocked the door and they entered.

When Aunt Frances pushed her forward, October saw the cells, eight or ten, side by side. In the half-dark she could make out lumps of bodies sleeping in some of the cells. And one cell door standing open. Mr. Hopp walked over to it, motioning for her to follow. Aunt Frances nudged her.

"You want to sleep in here?" Mr. Hopp said.

October shook her head no. Up close, she could see the measly cot with no sheet, the stinky slop jar, the dirty stone floor. She wondered about the police-what would they care about a fight between her and Vergie? But she couldn't guess how far Mr. Hopp could go at the jail, and there was no way to know how far Aunt Frances's wrath would go.

A cold, stone floor at night, being locked away, having to lie on that cot and use that slop jar-would Auntie do that to her? Was she finally just an orphan?

Aunt Frances had then opened the cell door farther and nudged her inside.

"This must be where you want to end up," she said. Then she said, "This is where your poppa ended up. He died in a place just like this. He started out just like you, fighting all the time."

She stepped out of the cell and clanged the door, leaving October inside the bars.

"Franklin may have given you his sister's name," Aunt Frances said, "-that's something you can't help. But you'll not have their ways and live with us, I promise you."

Dazzling. So her name really did come from those people-people she knew only as too lowdown and dirty to be mentioned. And what else? Her father had been a character in a storybook, banished to never-never land. She had always thought of him as put away forever. The end. It had never occurred to her that he could die.

An aunt, someone named Lillian, the woman who had raised him? No one had ever bothered to mention this. The whole day had turned into a new life. Her blackberry skin was a given, but until that day the only other family resemblance October had ever taken into account had been the way she favored Carrie or Aunt Frances or Aunt Maude or Vergie. With one word, she had a life times two. She had hurt Vergie more than she had had intended. Just happened. And then Vergie had opened a sewer with all kinds of gullies and gutters feeding it. Such a secret. All this time everybody had known.

October, even at the age of nine, had understood then that she was someone other than herself. That she was different from Aunt Frances and Aunt Maude. Different, too, from Vergie. Unwittingly, Aunt Frances had held a mirror in front of her, and even if she couldn't yet make out what she saw, she knew this: in more ways than one, the reflection coming into focus looked like a leper.

After that night, slowly at first, then whenever it wanted to happen, then with a vengeance, the name Lillian had become an accusation. Vergie's way of drawling out "Lil-yan" could be an excruciating jab or a pin-stick, depending on how raw October felt at the time.

Aunt Frances and Aunt Maude would step in a little with "All right, Vergie, that's enough."

But they, too, had got in the spirit of the curse. "Lillian" was the epithet when October's att.i.tude became the stubborn cliff their reason couldn't climb. They tiptoed, never used the name unless they were put out with her. Otherwise they started calling her "Lily" or "Lily Ann."

But she called herself October to herself. October, for the month their mother had died. October, for the lack of any other name that she could put on to say how it felt to become another, stranger person.

Over time, though, she hardened. Turned her secret into a plan. When she got to seventeen, that was it. Old enough. She learned not to flinch so, and Vergie got tired of trying to use a dull weapon. Aunt Frances and Aunt Maude got tired, too, or guilty. However it happened, at some point they all dropped "Lillian" from the list of words they could use when they were mad, and replaced it with a permanent "Lily" for all occasions. Which sure enough proved that the name had kept some evil thing alive for too long. For a time anyway, October was Lillian to the world, Lily at home, and October to anyone who would go along.

It was always with a good feeling that she remembered the long swoon of p.u.b.erty. A for-real-new person, starting with her body and going on to the music of her own voice, every single nerve ending exposed in every single moment. Without telling anyone, she had fallen in love, first with the deciduous drama of autumn, the pungency of blade and leaf giving up the ghost. Fallen in love with poems, any poem, and with the sound of the flute, or a bird, or train whistle.

She had fallen in love with the boy who worked in Ford's grocery store, and because she never caught that boy's name, she had switched her love to the Reverend's son, home from Wilberforce College. Because he had never been around for long and had never noticed her, she ventured to speak to a boy in the twelfth grade who said hi to her once. He didn't need a name. They didn't need to talk.

Each night before bed, like the leper in The Good Earth, October had inspected every inch of her new body for white freckles. She was convinced that the brown would return, and since no other spots had appeared, she got it in her head that the sun had protected her, and spent more time outdoors.

When she had turned seventeen, old enough to give herself a new name, with two aunts who were only relatives, not parents, October found an accomplice. The Reverend's daughter, Dainty Bonner.

Dainty wore her hair twisted around a hair-rat, the way women did, in a crown hoop that she set off with jeweled combs. She smoked and had a boyfriend twenty years old. October had fed Dainty bits of the whole orphan story and the evil family she didn't want to be related to. Tortured friend. And Dainty had agreed that "Lillian" had never been a name that suited her, and that "October" stood out. And Dainty had known exactly where, in the courthouse, they had to go to do the thing right.

October had never done this before. She went to the courthouse unprepared. How could she have known about things like the proof of her birth or birth name, and how much money she would have to pay, and a fail-proof reason for a name change, and the six-week wait for it to be official. And so, on another not-so-brave day, she and her Dainty friend went back to the courthouse. This time she had rifled through Aunt Frances's cedar chest for papers and emptied her own secret stash for the notary's fifty cents. This time she had announced her intention to Aunt Frances, who had dared her to leave. This time, with her shortie slung across her shoulders, and her hand on the doork.n.o.b, she had disowned the only mother she had ever really known.

Under "Justification" on the form, October wrote a version of the truth. Instead of pointing to the bloodline, she wrote that Lillian was the name of the mother of the man who had killed October's own mother: No one would dare refuse her then.