Celeste's Harlem Renaissance (24 page)

I thought about that. It made sense. I could understand why Poppa wanted me home. Just like I wanted Aunti Val home. Miss D yawned and began wiping off the cream. “Cece, I don’t know that Val’ll ever make it big in New York like she wants,” she confided. “She ought to come back here where people know her and care about her. That’s how I see it.”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t seem to see it that way yet.” We said good night and I peeked in on Aunt Society. She was quiet. I got myself settled on the divan in the parlor. Was I flitting back and forth, too? I was sure getting moved back and forth. Was I like Aunti Val or Aunt Society? Was I a butterfly or a rock? And which one did I want to be?

Midnight came and passed. I was still awake, listening for that bell. I eased up, tiptoed to Aunt Society’s room, and glanced in. Her lamp was still lit and her eyes were open. Was she still breathing? Or had she . . . crossed the waters?

“Aunt Society, you all right?” I asked anxiously.

She let out two soft grunts that I decided was “Uh-huh,” meaning yes. I told her good night and tiptoed back to the couch, relieved. Bad as the circumstance was, it was good to be home. “Thank you, Lord,” I whispered.

The next thing I knew, the sun was shining in my face and Mrs. Smithfield was knocking at the door. “I knew you-all’d be tuckered out from your trip, so I brought over breakfast,” she said, holding a tray full of food.

At 7:45
A.M.
Miss D set her hat on her head and pulled on her gloves. I placed her bags by the curb. “You take care of yourself now, Cece. I’ll write to you when I get to Charleston, and I’ll keep tabs on Valentina when I’m back up there. The Lord willing, I’ll move to Charleston for good. I’ll be closer to you, then.”

We hugged and hugged. With Miss D leaving, I was beginning to feel like an orphan again, like when I left Poppa back in March for New York. “I’m gonna miss you so,” I whispered. “I just don’t know about Aunt Society.”

“Can’t be too much worse now than before.” Miss D smiled. “You can still outrun her.”

When Mr. Stackhouse’s auto arrived, Mr. Smithfield jumped out, waved at us, and opened the door. Miss D settled herself in the back. He started to join her, but she closed the door first. “I like to be chauffeured,” I heard her say.

“Alton, you ole flirt, behave before I put my skillet on your head,” Mrs. Smithfield said firmly. Mr. Shepperson drove them off, with Miss D waving at us and us waving back.

“Well, here we are,” I said, wiping away tears. Mrs. Smithfield nodded.

After she checked on Aunt Society and went over instructions with me, she got ready to leave. “If you have an emergency, go to the Stackhouse and get hold of me at the governor’s. Maybe your girlfriends can come by, too. They’ve asked me about you.”

“What if she won’t act right?” I whispered.

“Do what you have to do. Oh, put one teaspoon of sugar and a little milk in her oatmeal.”

The cowbell rang. “Help me one more time,” I pleaded, but Mrs. Smithfield said good-bye and got to stepping.

Taking a deep breath, I dragged to Aunt Society. “You ready for breakfast?” She grunted, which I took to mean yes. I hurried into the kitchen, prepared her tray, and set it on her lap. Aunt Society glared at me, and with her good hand knocked the bowl off the tray. It broke on the wood floor, splattering slimy oatmeal everywhere. Her twisted mouth resembled a smile.

Oh, joy, here we go.
“Accidents happen, don’t they?” I said with a fake brightness. “I’ll clean it up and bring you some more. This was one of Momma’s good china bowls.” I took the mess back to the kitchen, got rags, and cleaned everything up while she watched me.

I brought her another bowl of oatmeal. Looking me dead in the eye, she knocked the bowl over. Oatmeal spilled across the tray and onto Momma’s quilt. “All right, that did it!” I put my hands on my hips. “I ain’t cleaning up no more food. You want to get well, you got to eat, but you got to behave first. I know you were mean to Momma when she was sick, but I don’t
want
to be mean to you.”

Well, we had a staring contest and she won because I left the room and stomped to the porch with my fists balled up. That cowbell got to clanging, but I stayed put. Ole bat! Ole heifer! After I cooled off, I went to her room. She grunted and pointed to the quilt. “Too bad. You made the mess.” I went to my room, got Dede, gritted my teeth, and began to play “Forsythia” while the cowbell clanged. I played until the bell stopped. I went to her room. She’d picked some oatmeal off the quilt and thrown it against the wall!

I returned to the porch. I might as well get used to dealing with the same terrible old Aunt Society that I had left. I tapped my foot. But she wasn’t dealing with the same Celeste.

Going to the parlor, I turned on the Westrand to my favorite program. That set off the cowbell, but I ignored it. I browsed the bookshelves, saying hello to my old friends. I washed the breakfast dishes. The cowbell clanged. Humming to a catchy, sassy tune on the radio, I dry mopped my bedroom floor, hung my bedclothes outside on the clothesline to air, and washed my windows inside and out while the cowbell clanged.

Around noon I came into my aunt’s room to see if she needed to use the lavatory or take medication, but I didn’t touch that oatmeal. I sat down on the bed away from the spilled oatmeal and took her bad hand in mine. She tried to jerk it away but I held on. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at her glaring at me. “I’m glad I’m back, Aunt Society, and I’m gonna do all I can to help you feel better.” So far, so good. “You raised me right. Now you gotta help me raise you back to health. But you need to be nicer to me. Don’t nobody else want to be bothered with you but me.”

When I opened my eyes, I saw tears slipping down her withered yellow cheeks. With a clean edge of the quilt I wiped them away, then I kissed her cheek. “Are you hungry now?” She grunted softly and with her good hand patted mine.

Chapter
Seventeen

E
valina and Swan! Standing on my front porch! Screaming, I nearly tore down the screen door getting to my friends. “Look at you!” Swan touched my thick braids and stared at my bosom. “Are those
yours
? Or are you still stuffing rags in your waist?”

“This is
me.
” I inhaled so that my chest would expand. “Aunti Val used Madam Walker hair stuff on my hair. It’s so good to see you! Where’ve you been? Where’s Angel Mae?”

“She’s got cramps,” said Swan, “but she said to tell you hello and she can’t wait to get over here and —”

Clang, clang, clang!
I sighed. “Sit down. I’ll be right back.” Somehow I had to shut down that bell. Aunt Society was pointing toward the porch, shaking her finger “no” when I reached her. “It’s just Evalina and Swan, for goodness’ sakes. I’ve been back four days, and the only folks I see are you and the Smithfields. If I can’t be having my friends over, I’m gonna take your bell.” I reached for it, but she dragged it under the sheet.

“Don’t ring it again, unless you need something important, you hear me?” I said. We had another staring contest, then, barely nodding, Aunt Society looked away. There! I returned to the swing and sat down between my friends, who were gawking at me.

“What in the devil was that?” Evalina asked. “You got cows in your parlor?”

“Your aunt was one reason why we hadn’t got over here sooner.” Swan lowered her voice. “Momma’d told me about her chasing off everybody who was trying to help her. How can somebody be sick and still act so cranky?”

“Oh, don’t pay her any —”

“I can’t get over how good you look,” Evalina broke in. “I wanna eat that New York food, too!”

“Like octopus and squid?” I laughed when Evalina looked shocked. “All right. What’ve you been doing since your last letters that —”

“I can fry chicken and bake cathead biscuits without burning ’em up,” Evalina bragged, “and Swan’s been working on a quilt with her momma and grandma —”

“Which we’re gonna enter at the fair,” Swan cut in. “Maybe you could can something and enter it, too, Cece. Didn’t your Aunt Society teach you?”

Or show fair folks how to scrub floors and empty chamber pots,
I thought. “I could play songs from
Shuffle Along
on Dede,” I said. “I went to all the rehearsals, and I —”

“I have to go pick tobacco on Granddaddy’s farm in August in Oxford.” Evalina interrupted me again! “You know how I hate those nasty tobacco worms.”

I folded my arms over my bosom. Evalina hadn’t changed. At least she didn’t have a cold. “Evalina, don’t make me jump salty with you for talking over me.”

“Huh? I thought you were through.” She sounded puzzled.

“If you’d been quiet, you’d have known,” I said back, gazing at her until she dropped her eyes and squirmed around. “Well, now. What’d you do Fourth of July? Aunti and I and Miss D went to a picnic in Central Park, and watched fireworks. It was simply fabulous.”

Evalina raised her eyebrows at me, sucked on her teeth, and repeated,
“Oh, sim-plee fabulous!”
to Swan. Swan smiled at me but kept quiet.

“Say something, Swan.
I
know how to listen.”

“Not like how you used to,” Evalina replied in her usual sassy tone.

“Evalina, behave,” Swan said. Well, thank goodness Swan hadn’t changed, I thought. “Cece, we stayed home at my house and had a big cookout in the back.”

The cowbell clanged, once. Swan stopped, looking at me. I blew out my breath. “I
told
her not to bother me while I had company, but she’s probably having a spasm in there anyway.”

“I never knew you to tell your aunt anything except ‘Yes, ma’am,’ ” Swan said. “I wanna know what you’ve been eating, too.”

“Pepper, seems to me,” Evalina said, scowling. “C’mon, Swan, Cece’s got to
work.
”

“Maybe we’ll be back after supper.” Swan stood up. “We can sit on your back porch, if the mosquitoes don’t eat us up, or if she” — she jerked her head toward the house — “doesn’t try to run us off.”

“You just got here,” I moaned, but they were already leaving the porch. When I walked in, Aunt Society was gripping that bell like it was her money purse. “What do you want? You and your ole cowbell chased off my company!” She pointed to her water glass. I’d forgot it was time for her medicine.

“Oh. I’m sorry.” After giving her the pills and watching her swallow, I coaxed her into swinging her stick legs out from the bed to stand for a while, like Mrs. Smithfield said to do. I didn’t look in her mouth, which she’d also said to do. If she wasn’t swallowing her pills, then that was her own fault, I decided. She walked a few feet, then motioned that she wanted to lie back down. I made her sit in her wheelchair instead, and pushed her to the kitchen while I warmed up her supper of navy beans, oxtails, greens, and sweet potatoes. Then I wheeled her out to the back porch to eat, and kept her out there while I straightened up.

“You’ll never get well unless you get out into fresh air every day,” I said while she ate. “You gotta move around to stir up your blood.” She rolled her eyes at me, but kept on chewing. After I finished, I sat down on the steps with my own plate in my lap. When the sun went down, we were still out there. She had fallen asleep, sweating, the food tray in her lap.

I got her settled in bed, then heated water and washed dishes. Afterward, I returned to the back porch and waited for the girls. A Carolina moon hung in the sky like an orange balloon. I hadn’t seen a moon like that since I’d left for New York. After an hour of waiting and slapping at bugs, I went inside to my room and put on my nightgown. Then I headed to the porch again. Where were Swan and Evalina? Maybe Swan had chores to do. Maybe Evalina was still mad because I wouldn’t let her hog the conversation like she was used to doing. Or were they jealous because I’d lived in Harlem and knew stuff that they didn’t? Or did they just not want to come over with Aunt Society and her cowbell lurking around?

I waited till nearly eleven o’clock. The neighborhood was so quiet I didn’t even hear any dogs bark. Back in Harlem when we came home from scrubbing floors or from
Shuffle Along
at this time of night, I always heard music, car rumbles, voices, cats or dogs yowling — some kind of noise. Maybe we’d have stopped at Café Noir Le Grande and enjoyed Mr. Ellington on the piano and ate Monsieur’s chocolate squares. Maybe Miss D was still up and we’d go sit and gossip with her for a spell. What a difference! I wondered how she was doing. And how Aunti was. Tears came into my eyes. I missed them. I missed Harlem, too.

After checking on my aunt — she was snoring — I went to bed, thinking over what I’d said or done that might have upset my friends.

A week passed, and washing day rolled around. When I went into Aunt Society’s room to collect her dirty clothes, I found her sitting up in bed. “Ha ho,” she said, flapping her good hand.

I was about knocked off my feet! “What? What? Hello, hello!” I yelled back after I found my voice. “Aunt Society, you’re talking!” I dropped to the bed. I thought I’d have a stroke myself. “God be praised, you’re having your breakthrough! Hello, hello!”

Her “ha ho” pepped me up with the washing. Afterward, I washed the dishes with some of the wash water and used the rest to scrub the kitchen floor. I washed myself with some of the rinse water and poured the rest onto the flower beds and the forsythia bush.

By early August, Aunt Society with my help could walk about inside the house and on the porches. She wouldn’t walk in the yard, partly because she was afraid of navigating the steps, but mostly because she still didn’t want to step in duck and guinea hen poop. She could produce a crooked but real smile when I had Miss Pinetar dance for her. My singing and playing “Forsythia” on Dede made her smile, too. That was a big change because she had hated my poem before, and had declared that I made Dede squeak like a rat. Best of all, she’d gotten reconciled to my having our Westrand radio on.

This was all good for
her,
but
I
hadn’t been able to visit anybody, especially Poppa, because nobody was able or willing to stay with her while I was gone. I couldn’t ask Mr. Shepperson to drive me because Mr. Stackhouse’s car was broken down. I wasn’t sure the Bivenses’ mule could make the long trip in the hot weather. I hadn’t even been able to call Poppa.