The Wilful Daughter (30 page)

“
I mean,” he cleared his throat and sat on the grass behind her watching as the black silk poured over her shoulders and mesmerized him. “Mama says you may not want to go back to Atlanta. Without a husband.”

She stopped playing with her hair but she wondered if he wanted to touch it. “It’s hard to raise babies without a husband. I guess your mama knows.” She regretted it the moment she said it. It wasn’t meant to be spiteful. Cora was one of the kindest souls she had ever met. “That is to say your mother is doing a fine job raising you and Millie by herself. But it’s hard, I know it’s hard.”

He cleared his throat again. “I heard say your sister came here cause she and her husband gonna raise your baby.” June just listened. So the cat is out the bag, she thought. And papa thought all was right with his hirelings. “So I guess what I’s saying is, since you a widow and you might be giving your baby to your sister to raise what you gonna do?”

She tossed her hair over her shoulder and let it fall down her back. It was down to her waist now. Had grown along with the baby.

The boy noticed and wanted to touch it but restrained himself. He thought she was the most beautiful creature on earth. And he also knew that she knew how he felt. She took her feet out the water and turned to him. “You know Michael, I hadn’t really thought about it. I’m not sure what I am going to do.”

His face brightened as he suggested: “You can stay here. I mean Miss Ella and Miss Fannie say you’d be good here.”

She laughed. “Good for what. I can barely cook and I mess up so many things that I try.”

“
But you learning.” He pleaded with her: “It ain’t like you a spoiled brat no more like they thought you was.”

He dropped his head. He wasn’t supposed to say that and he knew it. With a smile on her full face she reached for him and patted his hand. “I have always been a spoiled brat, Michael. I just learned how much of one I was when I came here.”

“
I didn’t mean no harm,” he said, head still hanging. “I think you are nice, real nice.” He pulled away from her touch and got up to move away. “I got to get back to work.”

“
Sure,” she said looking at him longingly. She saw a bit of Willie in him. She also knew that in her he saw a woman with long black hair and full lips that he wanted to kiss. Even if she was filled with another man’s child.

So because of Michael, June spent the next few days thinking about what to do after the baby came. It preoccupied her every waking moment. She would be cooking her biscuits, had flour all over the place and herself, and rolling them out before she cut them and suddenly she would stop and think: if I was married like Minnelsa I’d be doing this for my husband. And she would lose herself into who her husband should be and could be.

There were few available men in Fannie and Ella’s little town, most of those who were her age had woman who had attached themselves to their men’s arms like leeches as soon as they had seen her. The others were either old or older. It would take Ella to wake her from her reverie.

“
Them biscuits going cut themselves out?” June would grin and get back to cooking.

At night she would sit on the porch with the other women. By now she was considered one of them and understood everything they were talking about. Millie loved to brush June’s hair and do it in many styles and ways until the other women made her stop. So June had decided that perhaps Millie should get a bit of her own medicine. June combed and brushed and braided Millie’s hair every night. Over the months, the little girl had gotten used to the pulling and tugging and began to enjoy the prestige of having the redbone gal from Atlanta take care of her hair. Millie no longer looked like a mop-head, her braids touched her shoulders neatly. This made June wonder what having a long haired little girl would be like and she would slip into that dream too, leaving the other women to talk about her.

“
June needs a bed warmer, Fannie,” Cora said one night as she watched the young pregnant woman brush Millie’s hair with that empty expression.

“
Naw,” Mattie said. “I don’t think June’s cold, I think she’s lonely. You think a lot more when you lonely. I believe she needs a comforter.”

“
A bright colored one,” Fannie decided. “One that keeps you warm and cozy all at the same time.” They would all look at her and then Fannie would say: “But she’s doing better than most of them red boned peaches that got picked and sent here.”

They would agree and June would pretend that she had not been listening.

But she heard it all and wished for someone to keep her bed warm. Whenever the baby kicked she thought she would die not having Peter to share it with, especially since Willie. . . The baby kicked a lot.

She was starting to waddle. Couldn’t be helped since she was so short. Her dresses pulled on her belly and her feet had turned black on the bottom from wearing no shoes. If papa could see her now!

Millie seldom left her side now that she was getting closer to the birth of the baby, and Millie was a joy as well as a nuisance. She wanted to know what she was going to name the baby and where would the baby sleep. June didn’t answer her. She wasn’t ready to tell her yet that once the baby was born she would be leaving.

Most of her afternoons she spent with her feet in the pond wishing she was young and pretty again. She knew she looked all right but she felt swollen if not fat. Most of those afternoons Michael would find some excuse to be near her.

One afternoon he bought an envelope to her. “It’s from my sister in Tuskegee,” she told him and he stood by waiting to see what was going to happen.

Her face dropped and he said: “Something wrong?”

She spoke softly. “Yes. We got to find Fannie. My sister is sick and I need to go to her.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The sadness and the crying drove the Piano Man out of the house night after night. He felt so bad and wanted to do something for her, but there was nothing he could do. “After all,” the doctor had told him, “You’re just a man. These things happen all the time.” The doctor gave him a fatherly pat on the shoulder. “Son, you mustn’t feel that it is your fault that she lost the baby.”

Peter knew his guilt. When he put his arms around Minnelsa he was sure she would break in two from shaking and crying, so he loved her even more. After all she had been through he didn’t want Minnelsa hurt.

Ever.

He had wanted to do everything right. He had wanted to please everyone. He did not want to raise his child growing in her sister’s womb. It would have pleased the Blacksmith to do it, but Peter did not know if he could live with that from day to day. Minnelsa seemed content enough to do it at first.

But when she said she was pregnant! How had he allowed Minnelsa to get pregnant? He had tried to do everything right. He had tried to do everything he was supposed to do. To do what was proper.

Seeing her that night, their wedding night, beautiful in her silk negligee, then touching her skin and feeling its smoothness, and finally taking her aging innocence and truly understanding that she was with a man for the first time. He was not sure he could do all that was expected of him.

He was not sure he could be the Blacksmith’s son-in-law.

He knew it was wrong but he did not want June’s baby to live. June was having this baby to torture him. Why hadn’t she just gotten rid of it? “A mistake is a mistake,” his mother once told him. “There are never reasons to make two.”

June had ignored her father in so many other ways, why not ignore him in this one, since she was coming to term, and give the baby to someone in the little town. If not for him, for her sister?

Minnelsa’s baby had died. She couldn’t write to tell her parents. How could she? She wasn’t supposed to get pregnant. So she wrote to the person closest to her geographically. She wrote to June and asked her to come be with her. Peter had said no, telling her it might depress her to have her sister, her pregnant sister, around. In actuality he was afraid to have them both under the same roof. But Minnelsa said she needed her sister, needed someone. She had cried and cried and Peter couldn’t stand it. When he finally agreed it was only after he had resorted to playing his piano almost all night and then going out to think about his situation.

It was then that Peter started buying a “taste” as they called it, from Gordon down the way. A little “taste” led to a big thirst which led to buying something every few days. Gordon once told him: “Man, you must have some big load on your shoulders to be getting all this stuff from me.”

Peter, the Piano Man, the husband of a woman who had just lost her first baby, the father of his sister-in-law’s first child, laughed and told him: “You don’t know, Gordon, old man, you just don’t know.”

It was then that he started talking about not adopting the baby but going back to Europe. Minnelsa didn’t respond at first, she was so wrapped up in sorrow. But Peter told her about his “friends” overseas and the places they could go that would take away the memory of a baby that wasn’t going to be. Besides, it was romantic in Europe and there they would be able to try again.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to try again, he wasn’t sure about anything. So he’d take a little “taste” whenever he wanted to forget and he wasn’t near his piano. After Minnelsa said she was not interested in going to Europe, and that they had to take care of June’s baby, after long days of tears and long nights of “it’s not time yet” he’d take a little “taste” when he was at the piano.

By the day June arrived, he was drinking the whole bottle and he played the piano night and day.

* * *

“
You gonna come back?” Millie asked sadly. She had grown to love June like a big sister.

“
I hope so.”

“
Hope you don’t have the baby there and then . . .” Fannie said nothing more.

“
It’s too bad Bira can’t go to Minnelsa,” Ella added.

“
Now you both know the reason why. She didn’t even want to tell me she was pregnant but she did. I’m the only one that can go to her.”

“
It’s the right thing to do, June. You take good care of your sister then.” Ella kissed her as she got in the car with Toby. “Let us know when you need to come back.”

The ride was longer than she thought it would be and Toby was not good company unless you considered the singing he did, and off key at that, as they drove down the road. June found the car as uncomfortable as she found the scenery beautiful. She fell asleep listening to an ill tuned lullaby.

The house of Peter and Minnelsa Jenkins was not old, but neither was it new. It had been built less than twenty years before and occupied by various professors who had families and wanted to live outside the Tuskegee city limits. It was not as big as her family’s home, and nothing compared to Fannie’s and Ella’s, but it was attractive just the same. When she arrived with her small suitcase and her swollen feet pushed inside her tight shoes, she heard the piano playing. She heard something sweet, but she didn’t know the tune. It was his kind of music, not hers. She held her breathe and touched her stomach. This was not going to be easy. She told herself she was not there to see him, she was there for her sister. Because if Minnelsa was as lonely as she was for mother and for home, they could comfort each other.

She knocked on the door and the playing stopped. Toby leaned against the car waiting to be asked in. June signaled for him to join her at the door. She almost went in without asking, into Minnelsa’s first home, she was so excited.

Peter looked shocked and out of sorts when he came to the screen door. “June?” he said and noticed Toby in the background.

“
Peter!” she said and stretched out her hand for him to shake, Toby watched the whole thing not clear about it and not really caring. Peter looked drawn and thin, exhaustion was on his face, as well as a day or two of stubble. June tried not to act shocked. “Where’s Minnelsa? I came to help her. At least I hope to make her feel better.”

Peter smiled warmly, but inside he wanted to frown. How much bigger she had gotten! He was still ill at ease with her. The sight of her reminded him of what they had done. He felt dirty and ashamed and drew back into the house wishing he had not been playing the piano all this time and had bothered to shave and wash.

“
It’s good of you to come since she asked you,” Peter said reluctantly. He still wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say to the mother of his child. “But do you think this is wise? She just lost a baby. Why do you think that in your condition you can make her feel better? You’ll remind her every day of the baby that would have been hers.”

June’s face puffed up but she was in control. “You stay out of this. This has very little, if anything, to do with you. Before she was your wife, before she was pregnant with your child, before you came to town and changed all our lives, she was my sister. She helped raise me. What she needs is her family, not some two-bit honky-tonk player. Now where is she?”

Toby cleared his throat and stepped back onto the porch. Wasn’t no need of getting in this family squabble. He had done his job getting her there and that’s all that concerned him.

June’s voice was shaking as she talked. She hated him more now than she thought possible. Why had she ever thought he would love her, or her sister for that matter? Why had she ever let him touch her and do this to her. How often she wished she could tell Minnelsa what they had done. That it was just as much his fault as hers, him not being able to keep his hands off of her, her not being able to get enough of him. Her hope that he’d marry her. But she swallowed that thought and pushed past him into the tidy parlor. Minnelsa was not there.