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The
first time I see Lucille again, I am lying in my bed. Alone. My newly
broken arm is propped on a pillow. It’s very late, close to dawn.
My face is hot from crying and loss and Vicodin, which they gave me at
the emergency room. The drugs are not appreciably helping stop the pain
in my right arm, which is imprisoned in a cast to my elbow. It’s
red. The cast, that is. Probably the arm, too, which feels like coyotes
are chewing on it. And the world seems red, too, all around the edges.
When I open my eyes, Louise is sitting in the chair where Rick always
throws his clothes. She looks exactly the same, which should tip me off
that something is slightly wrong, but in my current state, nothing seems
real, so I just blink at her for a long minute.
It’s been twenty-five years since I’ve seen her. She’s
wearing a shawl that a matador gave her, red with black silk fringes she
plays with. There are heavy silver bracelets on her tanned arms, and she’s
drinking a cocktail. It’s funny enough that I smile. Louise always
did believe in cocktails. My mother said she was a drunk, but she wasn’t.
I knew even then that my mother was just afraid of Louise. Afraid of her
sexuality, afraid of her courage, afraid of her version of womanhood.
Afraid it would leak out of her house somehow, like bad water, to poison
the whole neighborhood. My mother and her friends, all the ladies on the
block, said terrible things about Louise’s clothes—gossamer
blouses that showed her low-cut bras, the sleek way she wore her hair
and let all of her back show, nape to waist, on summer days. She told
me it was a woman’s secret power, her back. It didn’t age
the way other parts might.
Men found reasons to stop by her yard when she was working with her flowers,
the flowers she nudged like magic daughters from the hard ground in the
desert. Poppies as big as sombreros, waving long, black inviting stamens
from their silky hearts, and roses in impossible colors, and cosmos by
the thousands.
The men stopped to admire her back. And her strong brown arms, and the
glimpse of her lacy bras.
But mostly they stopped to hear that wild, bold poppy laugh come out of
her throat. Stopped to have her admire them. Stopped to be watered by
her joy.
She was sixty-six years old when she moved into our neighborhood.
Now it has been twenty-five years and she’s at the foot of my bed,
not in some ghostly form, but as solid as the cat purring on my hip. When
she doesn’t say anything, I swallow the rawness in my throat and
croak, “What are you doing here?”
“Time to take it back, kiddo.”
“What?”
“Your life.”
OCTOBER
HECATE
Hecate completes the goddess triad of the Maiden (Persephone), the Mother
(Demeter) and the Wise Woman (Hecate). She walks between the seen and
unseen world but resides in neither, carrying a flaming torch so she can
see where others can't - into the human psyche. She is accompanied by
her dog (or horse), her sacred animals, and offers her magical protection
in times of danger.
If you have that sense of foreboding sitting in your solar plexus, it
may be that you are standing at a crossroad, and are unsure about where
you need to go next. Rest assured that Hecate is walking alongside you,
carrying her torch with which to guide you.
Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm:
for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave:
the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.
Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it:
Song of Solomon 8:6-7
CHAPTER ONE
Roberta
Sunday,
October 10, 20--
Dear Harriet,
My hands are shaky as the leaves on the trees today. Hope you can read
this all right. I hate seeing that I’ve got old lady handwriting.
But then, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? How’d we get so
old?
It’s Sunday and I ain’t been to church. Been sitting here
all morning by my Edgar, trying to get enough courage up to let him go.
I sent everybody away—all the parishioners who been bringing greens
and pots of stew and washing up my dishes while I sit with him. Sent even
the children away. They can all come back later, when I’ve gone
and done what I need to do.
Sister, I been here all morning and can’t open up my mouth to say
it. Go on, Edgar. I’ll be all right. He’s just waiting for
that, because when he fell into this coma, I grabbed his old hand and
begged him not to leave me.
And he’s such a good man he’s holding on. There, now I’m
crying again.
I been holding his hand for sixty two years. This morning, I was holding
it and remembering that morning he first came to our backdoor, asking
for a drink of water. Remember? He’d been down on his luck, but
he was so proud. He looked so good in the sunshine with his pretty head
and that strong old nose. My heart flipped clean over and I wasn’t
but fifteen. I’ve had no use for any other man since that day.
I been remembering all of it this morning. Wondering how it would have
been if we’d stayed back there in Mississippi with all y’all.
Wondering what it was he saw in Italy that made him never talk about it
his whole life long. Wondering if we’d of had as good a life if
we hadn’t come west to Pueblo, where we’ve been so peaceful.
Home of the Heroes. Did you know they call it that nowdays?
Fitting. Edgar put away all his medals, but he was sure proud when the
Medal of Honor winners all came here. He put on his best suit that morning,
and went down to listen to them, all four old men like him. I went along
with him, of course, but I didn’t hear what he did. I asked him
one time if it was so bad as all that, and he just bowed his head and
said, worse.
So I just let it be.
And he’s not a perfect man, not by any means. He was too stern with
the children, fussy about things as he got old, wanting every little thing
his way. We’ve had our share of dark times, too, times when I wanted
to take a meat cleaver to his stubborn old head. Once or twice, he hurt
my heart, but he never did it on purpose.
It’s not those times I’m thinking of now, though. I’m
remembering how hard we could laugh, so much that Edgar would get to wheezing.
I’m thinking about waking up morning after morning after morning
with him lying beside me. Listening to him, whistling as he fiddled with
a television dead but for the magic he gave it with his clever mind.
Lord, give me strength. I have got to let him go. He’s withering
away right in front of my eyes. But I’m telling you the truth, sister,
I’m going, too. I asked the Lord to take me. Y’all know I
love you, but you, sister, know my life won’t be nothing without
him.
Your sister,
Berta
Mother, the moon is dancing
In the Courtyard of the Dead.
Federico Garcia Lorca
Dance of the Moon in Santiago
CHAPTER TWO
Trudy
When Edgar
dies, I am next door in my house, reading Lorca with my hands over my
ears so I don’t have to hear the wind. It’s only because I
have to take them down to turn the page that I hear Roberta’s cry,
that piercing wail that can only be called keening.
It’s been a long day, waiting for this. Because I wanted to be here
when the moment arrived, I didn’t go to the movies or out to the
mall to distract myself from my own troubles. Roberta’s granddaughter,
Jade, is on her way to Pueblo from California, but she isn’t here
yet, and Roberta sent everybody else away. When the moment comes, she’ll
need someone. So I’ve waited. Trying to keep warm---I’m wearing
a t-shirt, a cotton sweater and a wool one, two pairs of socks and jeans—and
I’m still cold. It’s like Rick was my furnace, and without
him, I’m turning into an icicle.
And the wind is driving me crazy.
People often tell me how much they love the wind. I’ve sat, with
my mouth open, while friends from elsewhere—they are always from
somewhere else---rhapsodize about the winds they know, and I can tell
that they’re thinking of entirely different entity---a green goddess,
trailing her veils over the beach or through the forest. They love a wind
that comes with moisture and beauty.
In Pueblo, our winds are of the Inquisition variety, winds that know that
the secret of torture is to begin and end, to be inconstant and constant
at once, to bellow and to whisper. Endlessly.
This year, it’s been even worse than usual. Every morning, it gathers,
gusting and stopping. Blasting and quitting. All day, it bangs on the
windows and blusters around the car and buffets the trees and tears at
the shrubs. Boxes blown from who knows where skitter down the street.
There is no surface without grit. Static electricity can knock you down.
I play music, loudly, to drown it out, put a pillow over my head at night.
But not today. I have to listen for Roberta.
For lunch, I pour some condensed chicken and stars soup into a pot and
put the kettle on for tea, huddling next to the burners with my hands
tucked under my armpits. The tea is indifferent, the soup the last can
on the shelf. I was lucky to find that much worth consuming, really, since
I keep forgetting to go to the grocery store. Right now, when I’m
hungry for something better than the cupboards have to offer, I look around
for my list so I can write good tea bags on there, but it’s gone
missing. Again. I can’t keep track of anything lately.
I used to spend at least two hours a week planning menus and shopping
for my crew of five. Now it’s only me and my seventeen-year-old,
Annie, but more often than not she eats at school or at her restaurant
job or with her boyfriend Robert. As long as I keep milk and cereal and
frozen pizzas around, she’s covered.
I keep forgetting that it might be good for me to cook for myself. Nobody
ever liked the same foods I do—my roasted veggie dishes and exotic
soups. Time to indulge. On my list, I write garlic, marinated pepper
strips, lemon juice, whole pepper. Frozen quiches. Cheddar (the good one),
Triscuits.
I won’t forget the single-serving cans of tuna, which have been
the mainstay of my diet lately. It’s easy, and at least the cats
get enthusiastic when they hear me pop the lid. I always pour the water
off into a bowl for them. They are immensely grateful and I can glow over
it for a good five minutes, standing at the counter eating out the can.
I know, I know. Cats, tuna---this has all the earmarks of a Bad End.
The kettle whistles and I pour water into my cup, think maybe I’m
just getting old. Bones thinning along with my skin, muscles withering
away to nothing. I think of my granny, wizened down to broomstick size,
and pull my sweater tighter around my torso.
Not old, not old, not old. Not at forty-six. Forty-six is young these
days, or at least just beyond the cusp of middle age.
Wind blusters against the windows, and I hear the sound of the chimes
my new neighbor hung on his porch. His things appeared abruptly overnight
three days ago, like the plumage of some exotic bird—a trio of chimes
strung across the porch, a cluster of sticks and painted canvas in the
side yard that promised quiet and other things, a foreign car I thought
might be an English mini, strange and small and orange. A ristra, cheery,
bright red chiles in a string, hung by the door, nothing strange by itself.
But it almost seemed that there was a new scent in the air, spice and
chocolate and the promise of fresh yeast. Shannelle, the young mother
across the street, said she’d glimpsed him, and widened her eyes
to illustrate her amazement.
I move to the window to peer out. My breath makes a thick circle of condensation
on the glass. At first I can only see the car, a blurry round like a giant
pumpkin, so I wipe away the fog and cover my mouth with my fingers. As
if called by my curiosity, he comes out on the porch.
Oh.
Despite the cold, he wears no shoes, and only some Ecuadorian-style pajama
bottoms riding low on hips the color of a sticky bun. Hair runs in a fine
line up the center of his belly like a stripe of cinnamon. Heavy silver
bracelets cuff his dark wrists. A necklace of claws, something made in
a jungle, hangs around his neck.
He stretches, showing the tufts of hair beneath his arms. I find myself
holding my breath with him, letting it out again only when he lowers his
chin, and in an insouciant gesture, tosses back his hair to show his face.
It looks good from this distance, a high brow and wide mouth. Hair, thick
and wavy, pours down to his shoulders in a tangle of honey and butter.
I half-expect him to look my way, feel my gaze like some magic being,
but he only bends over to pick up a newspaper and goes back inside.
Lazy thing, I think, sleeping until past noon.
I carry my tea and soup into the dining room, put down a placemat on the
table even though there’s no strict need for it. It’s not
like the table needs protecting—it’s ancient and beautiful,
but scarred from twenty-some years of family dinners—but I like
the homey look of the floral pattern against the wood. I think it might
be for show, in case anyone happens by, a way to show that I’m doing
just fine, but that’s okay, too. I get a matching napkin out of
the drawer and center everything on the mat, look for a magazine to read,
trying to recapture the sense of well-being such old rituals used to give
me when Rick went off riding with his buddy Joe Zamora, and the kids were
at friends’ houses or skating or whatever. In those days, time alone
was a luxury—I’d put on some music no one else liked and fix
some soup only I would eat, like my very special corn chowder, and read
in the blissful aloneness.
But the evening looms. The house thunders with emptiness. How could my
old life be over so suddenly that after years and years of never having
a minute to draw my breath now I have so much time that I feel myself
sinking into it like quicksand, drowning in it?
A mother finished. A wife dismissed.
Cliché-city.
“God, Trudy,” I say to myself aloud, since there’s no
one else to say it to. “You are boring me to death now. Do something.”
So I find the collection of Lorca’s poems, which I’ve been
reading in an attempt to renew my acquaintance with Spanish—a passion
I left behind somewhere. His work is appropriate to accompany the sound
of Roberta’s singing that comes to me between bursts of wind. The
houses are not that far apart and she’s got one of those big, black
Southern gospel kinds of voices, like Aretha Franklin, though she pooh-poohs
that comparison. I knew when I heard her that she was singing her husband
Edgar’s favorites for him.
One last time.
Letting him go at last. He’s been in a diabetic coma for two weeks,
since just after supper one Friday night. I was sitting with her when
it happened—he’d been sick for awhile, pieces of his body
just eaten away by the disease—and she grabbed his hand, and cried
out, “Edgar, don’t you leave me!” in such a heartbroken
voice that I had to go home and cry about it later.
The hospice workers and the nurse who came in every day kept saying they
didn’t know what in the world was keeping him alive. But I knew.
So did Roberta.
The cry comes again, a wild piercing wail, the sound of her soul tearing
in half. I put down my book, put my hand to my chest, and let it move
through me. In a minute, I will stand up and go to her.
In a minute.
In between, I let it swell in me, the freshened sorrow that her grief
brings. My husband is not dead, just in love with somebody else, but I’m
mourning him all the same, and my heart joins in Roberta’s howl,
as if we’re a pair of coyotes. My wrist, out of the cast now for
a couple of weeks, starts throbbing, and I put my other hand around it
protectively.
Roberta. I put on my shoes and coat and hurry over to her house.
Shannelle,
the new girl—well, woman, I guess, since she’s 23 with two
kids and a husband---showed up at Roberta’s door within minutes
of my arrival. The ambulance came and went, taking Edgar’s withered
body to the morgue. I made phone calls to break the news gently to a list
Roberta had prepared ahead of time. Now I sit with the old woman on her
couch, the clock ticking loudly on the wall, as gloomy a sound as I’ve
ever heard.
Roberta has been my next-door neighbor for sixteen years, since Rick and
I moved in. She welcomed our young family with a pot roast and all the
trimmings and a lemon cake that is still Rick’s favorite in all
the world. I’d been so tired from moving boxes and trying to keep
track of the children and trying to get everything at least settled enough
that we could sleep that I’d wanted to throw my arms around her
and cry.
And now I sit with her for the same reason—just to be a presence
when she needs one. She loved Edgar more than God, though she’d
never admit it. They’d been married sixty-two years last month,
and if ever there was a man worth loving, he’d been it. A true Christian,
loving and real, practicing his faith in everyday ways, all the time.
I think about him as I sit with Roberta, knowing she must be thinking
of him, too. No, thinking is too small a word. I'm sure her entire body
is filled with him just now, every cell sliced wide open.
The clock ticks in the quiet.
It’s a bright room, with big, clean mirrors and a well-dusted piano
against the wall. The colors are the sunny greens and yellows of a summer
afternoon, the furniture as comfortable as hammocks. She uses lemon oil
to clean the wood, and Pine-Sol on the floors, a trick she swears is her
secret for keeping waterbugs at bay. The water table is high in the neighborhood,
and the nasty, giant sized cockroaches are an eternal problem, at least
for everyone except Roberta.
Roberta herself is neatly dressed, as plump and kindly looking as an old-fashioned
kindergarten teacher. Her skin is smooth, thanks to the care she takes
to wear a hat outdoors, and there are small pearl earrings in her lobes,
the remains of a good lipstick she put on this morning. She’s tearing
a tissue to tiny threads, the lint falling unnoticed to the floor. I touch
her upper back gently, rub it the slightest bit.
Shannelle, perky and blonde and impossibly young, is making coffee, cutting
a freshly baked coffee cake into squares for us and anyone else who might
be arriving. She’s humming softly under her breath as she bustles
around, finding a tablecloth in the one of the drawers that she shakes
out and spreads on the broad dining room table, then puts out a stack
of napkins, forks, spoons, cups. There’s a ham in the fridge and
she brings it out, unwraps it, opens a can of pineapple chunks, comes
into the living room. “Roberta, where would I find the brown sugar?”
Roberta surfaces for a moment. “It’s in blue Tupperware, sweetie,
lower left hand counter. You puttin’ that ham in?”
“Yeah,” Shannelle says. “Seemed like a good thing, with
everybody comin.”
“You’re a good girl.” Roberta’s hands still for
a minute. “Will you look for me, and see if there’s some greens
in the freezer? Church has been bringing so much around, and I think there
were greens.”
“I’ll look.” The sound of her digging, moving, talking
to herself. “Found some!” she cries. “Mustard greens,
right?”
We hear a car outside, a slamming door. “See who that is, Trudy,
will you? I don’t want nobody from the church right this minute.
They can come tomorrow.”
I look through the small window cut into the door. “It’s Jade.”
Roberta’s granddaughter.
Jade lived with Roberta all through college, and I knew her well, but
it's been seven or eight years since I’ve seen her. Back then, she
was a skinny thing, bouncy and full of a sweet idealism that always touched
me. She was always extraordinarily beautiful in the way mixed race children
often are, somehow combining the best qualities of their parents into
something luminous as twilight.
That was then.
The woman rounding the car wears black boots with tall, square heels and
a tailored jacket of buttery black leather. She’s better than six
feet tall, and strides up the walk with a no-nonsense, touch-me-not aura
that is more than a little intimidating.
She is still beautiful, with those high cheekbones and elegantly cut mouth
and wide-set, enormous green eyes. But she’s let her hair grow and
it tumbles around her shoulders in wild curls, streaked with red and gold
amid the darker strands. I have great hair, don’t get me wrong—it’s
my one wealth and I’m vain about it—but for an instant, I
feel a flash of envy for such untamed extravagance. “Jade!”
She grins and rushes up the steps to throw her arms around me. “Trudy!
It’s so good to see you! God, you don’t look a single day
older, I can’t believe it!”
She doesn’t know, of course. How could she? She’s been on
the road since yesterday morning. I hug her, keep my hand on her arm as
I draw her inside. “I’m afraid there’s some bad news,
honey.”
She sees her grandmother sitting with the piles of shredded Kleenex in
little tufts of snow around her feet. “Oh, Grandma!” Jade
says, flowing over to Roberta. “I’m so sorry, but I’m
here now.”
As if she’d been waiting for this anchor, Roberta crumples over
and begins to weep. Shannelle and I can go now, but I’ll wait for
her to finish putting the greens in the pot. Jade fetches a Librium for
her grandmother and I help Shannelle—we make a pitcher of sweet
tea, fill the sugar and creamer containers Roberta likes, crystal and
silver. I carry in a cup of hot chocolate to Roberta. It’s her favorite
and she thinks it sinful to drink so much. “You need a little something,”
I say gently.
“Thank you, darlin’.”
“I’m gonna just get my things in, Gram. Be right back.”
Jade looks at me. There are no tears on her face, only that mask of toughness
that startles me a second time---whatever has happened in her life has
been hard on her. “Would you mind helping me bring in a couple of
boxes before you go? I don’t want to leave them out there all night.”
I nod and follow her out. A gust of wind, carrying the bone-deep chill
of winter arriving, sweeps over us, blowing our hair into tangles. Jade
unlocks the car and reaches into the backseat. “There isn’t
much. I put most of it in storage.” She hands me a box that looks
hurriedly packed, things just thrown in without much regard for order.
“I guess you heard I’m divorced.”
“I did. I’m sorry.”
A shiver of almost grief crosses her face and she turns back to the car,
hauls out a suitcase and a cosmetic bag. “Well, yeah, what’re
you gonna do? Least I got out of there.” She pauses, looks at me.
“You, too, huh?”
I swallow. We just signed the papers. “It’ll be final the
end of February.”
“I’m sorry.”
The wind is rustling through the box, and I put a hand over the photos
about to fly away. “Yikes! Hold on or the wind will take everything.”
“They’re all like that.” For a minute she looks flummoxed.
“It’s all right. We’ll just make a couple more trips.”
We get the boxes and bags into her old college room, a place that must
look exactly as it did when she left, degree in hand. It’s cluttered
with the detritus of a young woman’s hopes---flowers, music posters,
frills and lace. Jade tosses off her jacket, showing arms roped with hard
muscle, and with a noise of disgust, reaches for a poster of a kitten
and tears it violently off the wall. I smile.
“What?”
“It helps to say ‘fuck’ a lot.”
She laughs. “Yeah? I’ll try that.”
On top of one of the boxes is a photograph of a man. “This him?”
I point and wait for permission to pick it up.
Jade nods. “Dante.” She sighs.
He’s not particularly beautiful, a dark-skinned black man with eyes
just slightly tilted upward at the corner, but there’s something
about his expression, a glint, a charisma that’s palpable in two
dimensions. My fingertips feel it. “Whew.”
“Yeah.” Jade takes the picture and with another brittle move,
tears it in half.
“Fuck you.”
I laugh and give her a short hug. “If you need anything, you know
where to find me.”
“Thanks. And thanks for sitting with Roberta. This is gonna be so
hard for her.”
I only nod.
Shannelle dashes across the street to her lamp-lit house. I move more
slowly toward mine. It’ll be empty still, since my daughter Annie
won’t get home from work for a couple of hours. In the air is a
smell of cooking mixed with the autumn-leaf cold and it makes me lonely.
I’m also hungry. I wonder if it’s worth the trouble to go
to the grocery store.
It isn’t until I start to turn into my place that I see him, the
new neighbor, coming toward me, his long hair lifting and blowing.
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