A Piece of Mine (10 page)

The decision was made one night when he had the fellows, those who had white wives, over to his house for cocktails and the conversation came naturally around to the
kind of women black women were. Era was a little tired of going into the kitchen or getting busy somewhere else when these conversations came up, so she just listened and thought. She knew from conversations with the white wives that most of them felt superior to their black men and one of their fantasies was to picture them, during lovemaking, as slaves; the black skin glistening on the white skin helped multiple orgasms along. So when the black men ridiculed their own black women, saying, among other things, “Black women are not ready, never had been ready and it would take 10,000 more years before the sister would begin to get ready,” the white women smiled, because they knew it was against the rules to laugh out loud at black women in these meetings in front of the other black brothers. But they moved to the kitchen or bedroom and, passing each other, the thrill in their hearts showed in their eyes as they looked at each other.

Era was setting a dish of hors d’oeuvres on the table when her husband said, “Black women will never stop castrating their men and when I have a son, I’m going to tell him, ‘Son, don’t be a fool and marry a black woman, get one just like your mama!’ ”

Era, full of it all, interrupted, “Reggie, do I castrate you?” He patted her on the hip and laughed, “Baby, we not talking about you all, we are talking about black women,” then he looked around for accord from his black brothers. Era didn’t laugh.

“Which one of you black brothers got a white mama?” She spoke quietly. “If you don’t have a white mama, then it’s your own mother you are dragging in mud, all the women in your families who carry the same blood you do!”

Reggie stopped smiling and looked seriously at Era, “Listen,” he started to say something.

Era looked around the room at the men, “When you was growin up, who tried to starve you and who tried to feed you? And when you find a foot in your behinds, now that
you are grown, what color is it?” Era threw the plate of food against the wall over the record player and it fell on the turn-table and knocked the needle off the Miles Davis record and began to spin and knock against the boards. Reggie jumped up to quiet his wife, acutely conscious of what the others were seeing and hearing, “Baby, baby!”

Then she said, “I am a black woman! I never told you I was white. I knew you didn’t want to hear that!”

Reggie stiffened, “I don’t want to hear it now!”

But Era didn’t care anymore. “What’s so big about you, so grand, that you think you aren’t stooping down when you try to tear black women down, women your own color? What makes you think you can tear half a thing down and leave the other half up? You weren’t freed from slavery any earlier than she was!”

Reggie reached for her but she moved away, still talking.

“I’m gonna tell you something. Black women don’t care if you like white women. What we really resent, and what makes us so disgusted with you, is that you have to stand on our shoulders, tear us down, make us look like nothing to make yourself big enough to do what you want to do! Just go on and like em if you want to, only stop tearing us down to do it! Some white women are really alright! So, it’s O.K.!”

Reggie was beyond anger. His male friends saw that and rounded up their coats and wives, who were trying to remember all the things they had told Era when they thought she was white. They left.

Reggie beat Era, lawyer or not, pushed her down the stairs so she could see the front door and said, “See that door, black bitch? You be gone out of it when I get back here in a few days.” Then he tore her clothes off her and made evil love to her as hard as he could. When he was finished, bitten and scratched, he grabbed his boat keys and left, saying, “I don’t want you no more!”

Era lay there and cried and cried until it was far into the night. She wasn’t crying for the loss of Reggie or the nice
house or the boat. It was the loneliness. She wanted someone to love her and she wanted to love someone … real. She called an ambulance, stayed two days in the hospital, where, fortunately, she learned nothing was broken. Came out, packed her things, went to a lawyer, stopped downtown and charged a new wardrobe for the country. Mailed back the charge cards to her husband with a note saying, “The cards come back from the black side, the bills will come from the white side of me.” Then she drove home to her mother’s to recuperate and think about her life and what she was going to do next.

Everything was still the same at home, quiet and peaceful, seeming far removed from big city racing. George was still there and they worked in the garden again and when Era needed something more to fill the days, she would go with George to work on his jobs. She liked being out in the sun, working in the earth. Sometimes they talked.

“George, you are still doing exactly the same things every time I come home.”

“What I’m going to change for? It suits me! Don’t give me no black eyes and big bruise!”

Silence would follow. But another time, she would say, “You know, you could make more money. Get a bigger house!”

“I’m doin alright! Do what I want to do! You can’t always buy the things you want, you know.” He would smile.

Silence. Then George might say, as he put the flower bulbs gently into the ground, “You had a big house … twice, far as I know. What they do for you?”

Era would pat the earth down gently around the bulb, “You know what I mean, George.”

Another time. “George, why haven’t you married? Had children?”

“Era, I’m gonna marry the woman I love. I don’t love them women I fool with!”

“Who do you fool with, George?”

He stood up. “This is a small kinda town … so when I need a woman, I gets dressed and go up the highway to a nice place I know and spend my money and when I get back, that’s all there is to it! Not nobody gonna be knockin on my door worryin me!”

“Ain’t nothing wrong with marriage, George. You need to be married!” She looked up at him.

He bent back to his work, “Ain’t done you no good, Era!”

Silence again. Off and on they talked about all the things they felt and thought about life. George was a little deeper than Era had thought, and she found she was not as deep as she thought she was!

Another time. “George, my marriages were different. I tried to make them both work.”

“What went wrong then?” He was digging around a tree.

“I was too black, George.”

“What that mean, Era?”

“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “One husband needed what he did not want … the other husband wanted what he did not need.”

George stopped digging and looked at Era. “Was you wanting a rich man? How come they picked you?” He picked up the shears and began pruning the tree, spreading the lowered branches apart so he could look at her. She began to drag the branches into a pile, the sunlight blazing down on her now shining, healthy, sun-baked face and body.

She finally answered, “Well, I guess I did, I do. And them? Well they looked at me and each one saw what he needed to see!”

George lowered his head through the branches, “And you helped them see what they wanted to see?”

“Ain’t nothing to say but I guess I did!”

“Era, you ain’t always sposed to see what you doing, you sposed to feel it! Seem like all you all did was for the look of things.”

“George, how come you know so much about it? You have never been married!”

“But I been in love a long, long time, Era.”

“Well,” her voice seemed strangled somehow, “Why don’t you marry her? What’s wrong with her?”

As he spoke, everything seemed to become still, suspended in space. “I love you, Era. Always have. Look like I always will. But you not sposed to know that, cause I ain’t gonna do a damn thing about it! Ain’t got no room for no big heartaches in my life … done had one all my life already.”

Era’s throat tightened and she could feel her own blood rushing through her body while at the same time the sun seemed to blaze brighter and she had to close her eyes from the glare.

Silence again. The rest of the afternoon they said things like, “You want this?”, “No, hand me that.”

When George called Era the next morning, she said she didn’t believe she would go with him. She expected him to come running by that evening; he didn’t. Nor the next, nor the next. She drove by his jobs and when she saw him and waved, he smiled. She could see his house from her porch and when he saw her, he waved, smiled and kept right on going about his business. On the week-end she saw him wash and shine his car all afternoon. Later he came out clean and dressed-up. He waved, got in his car and drove off, to the highway.

Era sat on the porch, thinking and staring at George’s house far into the night til he came home, then she went in to bed and stared at the ceiling, feeling. Another week went by. He came by and ran in with some flowers for Minna and grabbed Era by the back of the neck, “Seem like I done lost my helper, Ms. Minna!”

Minna answered, “I don’t know why! She ain’t doin nothin round here cept reading and lookin out the window and sittin on that porch!”

George let go Era’s neck, “Well, people got to read and
look out windows too. I got to go!”

Minna asked, “What’s your hurry? Stay and have some supper, Era cooked it.”

“No, ma’m,” George smiled. “Got to get home and clean up. Going to hit the highway this evenin!” He started out the door.

Era spoke sarcastically, “Again? You sure hitting the highway a lot!”

He smiled at her, “How you
FEELING,
Ms. Era?” He put a lot into that word “Feeling”.

“You ain’t been calling me ‘Ms. Era’, call me Era!”

He smiled at her as he got into his truck, “Era, you sound like you don’t feel too good.” He drove away.

She didn’t have to wait on the porch as long this time. He was back after a couple of hours. She started across the street to talk to him. For some reason she was angry. But she changed her mind when she realized she didn’t have anything really to say. She went back home to bed. She lay there listening to Minna and Arthur talking and laughing in their bedroom. They made things seem so simple, close and good. Where was her man, the man she could live with in peace and love … and reality? She thought hard about herself.

The next day she was up early and dressed in her cutest shorts outfit. She went and worked in the garden. When George passed, she smiled and waved him by. For a week she did her yard and helped the neighbors on each side of her, in a new cute shorts outfit every day. She seemed to perk up each time George’s truck came by and he seemed to find more reasons to come home for a minute. On the week-end, when he had cleaned his car and himself and was driving away, he slowed in front of Era’s house where she was painting the fence.

“Good lord! you are busy Era! You gon paint the house next?”

“If I
FEEL
like it!”

“That’s right!” He smiled, “Always try to do what you feel! Wait for the feeling!”

Era placed her hands on her hips. “You sure feel like hitting that highway a lot!” She screamed at him as he drove away.

He was back early, hardly over an hour. As he parked in his driveway, Era burst through the porch door, slammed it and with her face set, strode across the street toward his house. He saw her coming and held up his hand and strode to meet her, calling, “I’ll meet you half way!”

They met in the middle of the road.

They were both silent for a time, then George spoke; his voice was soft in the dusky evening on the empty road.

“What’s the matter, girl?”

“I don’t know, man!” Her voice, angry, trembled.

“Want to talk about it, woman?”

“Yes …” She looked up at him. He took her hand, pulling her toward his house. “Wanta sit down?” He asked.

“I want to know if you meant it when you said you loved me?”

“Yes, I meant it. I also meant I don’t want no problems.”

“Am I a problem to you, George?”

“Do you love me, Era?”

“I want you … is that love? I feel you! Is that love?”

“Sometimes.”

“Well, what do you want from me, George?”

“Love … and a peace of mind.”

“How will we know we’ll always feel this way? What will I get from you, George?”

“Love … and a peace of mind.”

“But how do you know?”

“Because I
FEEL
it, Era. Always have, always will.”

They drew close, standing there for a time, then they kissed for the first of many loving and peaceful times.

She was neither white nor black now. She was a woman, his woman. It lasted til death did them part, leaving beautiful brown children on the beautiful brown earth. They worked their garden which grew abundantly and had mostly … love and a peace of mind.

M
Y
NAME
is Mrs. Eustace B. (for Bernard) Walker and I am Ida R. Walker, myself. I have lived in this house, this same house!, for 81 years! I was born here, raised here, married here and I lived right here! My sisters and brothers all moved away and left me early on. I have done my duty by everybody … I stayed here. First, my father died, then my mother passed and last of all, my husband passed. Oh yes! I stayed and done my duty and … still doing it! I am 81 years old and don’t know if I did my duty to myself right or not; but I can’t change nothin now. But when you live that long to be that age, you have done something right! Least ways if you look good as I do! Everybody says I look good! Ain’t no need for them to lie!

Sit on down over there. Make yourself comfortable. I’m gonna roll out these rolls and pop them in the oven for us to make our acquaintance by. I’m a good cook!

Now, up and down this street, you know I have seen it grow from a path, to a road, to a street, with rocks and mud and horses, to gravel and finally that ugly black tar for cars. I rather horses myself! I rather smell horse manure than
spend good money on gas that just blows out and it’s gone. But anyway, back to what I’m trying to tell you.

Now where’s my flour?