The Wilful Daughter (44 page)

Her real mother.

He hummed along with her as he came closer.

“
Come on, Daddy,” she giggled, “Dance, dance.”

And without a second thought he took off his jacket laid it down on the grass and began to twirl like a man possessed. Arms flapping in the wind like a bird, hands above his head to be a tree, then waving them back and forth like he was blowing in the wind.

He tired before she did and fell to the grass. She giggled: “Silly Daddy,” and fell on top of him. Minnelsa would wonder where the stains came from. But she wouldn’t ask. She never asked about the condition of hair or clothes or shoes when Peter and Ophelia were together.

And he knew why she never asked: “Peter, you are such a good man to do this deed, to raise my sister’s unfortunate daughter.”

He sighed his regrets. Yes, I am a good man indeed.

Ophelia bounced on him, laughing and giggling.

The good man he was stayed for this, for these moments. He stayed down on the ground for her as she made a crown of flowers for his head, for kisses planted on his cheeks with tiny wet lips. He stayed for tiny fingers entwined in his when he walked down the street. For a tiny voice full of questions that he wanted to be there to answer. For holding her in his lap until she went to sleep and tucking her in, again, when Minnelsa wasn’t looking.

He hated this family, this life, the lie he chose to live.

But he stayed for his daughter.

How many times he had thought of leaving, he couldn’t remember. The first weeks of marriage had been fine. The newness of commitment for him, the newness of sex for Minnelsa had bound them closer than he could have ever believed. Most nights he barely thought about June, for there was a real loving woman at his side. A woman who would never leave his shirts dirty and his meals uncooked to go dancing into the night. And he rarely thought about the juke places he had been in his life that gave him audiences dying to hear the music his slender fingers produced, even if it wasn’t Chopin or Liszt. The same places gave him men who toasted to his every success and warm women who wouldn’t make him work so hard to love them.

Those women knew what to do, how to hold a man. Did it in the woods, rubbing against a tree. In a barn next to a horse eating hay. On the hard ground when there was no bed with starched white linen sheets.

Like June.

Minnelsa didn’t know these things and he was sure she never would.

This was not something a husband could teach a wife. It was something that erupted from inside. She didn’t cringe at his touch. On the contrary, she liked it. But she had no passion. None at all.

She was a good wife. She did as she was told, she submitted and seemed to enjoy. She never refused his touch, his suggestions.

No that was wrong. She had lately refused him because of the suggestion of the doctor. Minnelsa was bound to miscarry again because of her age, if nothing else, if she wasn’t careful. And just like the porcelain doll her father had made all his daughters into, she was untouchable again.

He knew he wasn’t missing much, and he hated to admit that. But he knew men who went through the same thing for years: wives that lived for their house, their children. They did not live for their husbands. In fact they became used to not having them around, at home, underfoot.

So he had taken to going back to Miss Emma’s once in a while. There he could find comfort in playing the piano like she was his lover. There he sometimes took comfort in the women.

But that didn’t happen often being the Blacksmith’s son-in-law. And until those days could happen again, he only had Sundays in this field with his daughter.

This was how life went for Piano Man for the next few months. Miraculously Minnelsa held onto the baby, rested in bed day after day with her books and her knitting and sewing.

She never complained about the boredom.

She never complained that they had moved back into her parents’ house. Took the old room she had shared with Fawn. Let Ophelia sleep in June’s room when she wasn’t crawling into the bed with them. All this was done so that her mother could look after her all hours of the day.

Then there was the breakfast thing. He couldn’t believe it when the first Monday morning they were there, and to him it wasn’t morning it was still night, Minnelsa got up and went into the kitchen. He had followed her thinking she was sleep walking and might hurt herself, when he smelled bacon and saw her wake up Ophelia and wash the half asleep child’s face. Bira was busy cooking when she saw him and said: “My biscuits aren’t as good as Jewel’s but they’re eatable. And it’s important to get a good meal to start on the day.”

“
Now?” he had muttered with drowsiness. Just then the Blacksmith had whizzed past him, having shaved in the mirror and the bowl in his room, going to wash up for the morning meal. It was then the Piano Man remembered June had told him that life in this house started before dawn.

So he stayed up for breakfast, for the bacon and biscuits and eggs and home preserves, the fancily sat table and the smile on Bira’s face that she was feeding folks again, especially now that all her daughters had left home.

It was Bira who suggested they let Minnelsa stay in bed and have breakfast there, it was Bira who suggested that if he didn’t mind (she knew it wasn’t a man’s job but he was so good with Ophelia) that he be responsible for getting his daughter up at the crack of dawn and washing and dressing her while she cooked.

Because of Minnelsa’s condition he agreed and all went well for about two weeks until she threw up the breakfast one morning and declared it was too early for her stomach to take food.

It was Bira who suggested they not disturb her anymore and just let her sleep. The Piano Man figured he would get to sleep late too, and that he could get Ophelia dressed when his little family got up. But that was not the case. They still expected him and Ophelia to rise with the Blacksmith.

He hated the hard tap on the door six mornings a week, hated the smell of fresh coffee and greasy but fresh meat steaming out of the kitchen.

It wasn’t like they needed him or even referred to his presence.

The Blacksmith monopolized the morning conversation asking Bira what she would do for the day, asking Ophelia silly questions that she giggled the answers to with a babyish: “Oh, Grandpa,” that made the big man laugh. Peter drank his coffee and ate his food. In fact he ate more food then he should have and found that after the Blacksmith left and Ophelia helped her grandmother with the kitchen chores he couldn’t go back to sleep.

What was a grown man supposed to do at dawn when he had four hours before he had to be at work? Peter drank more coffee, ate more biscuits, so by the time he needed to leave for the college he was ready for a nap.

When his pants started getting too snug, he realized that he was not cut out for this life.

Each Sunday was as it had been before - the family all assembled at the Blacksmith’s home. Now that he lived there and was about most of the time, he found no place for a quiet thought. If Ophelia wasn’t saying: “Daddy, play with me,” if Minnelsa wasn’t asking him to rub her back or help her about, if the Blacksmith wasn’t trying to ask him questions about the places he had been and the classes he had taught that week, if Bira wasn’t trying to feed him, soothe him, make him feel at home, then his brothers-in-law were asking him about his music, his travels. When they were alone on the porch and the Blacksmith was taking an afternoon walk with Bira and one or both grandchildren, they would ask him about the women he had known, the things he had done that made him a man when he was growing up in Europe. They would sip the ice tea the women prepared, wishing it was something stronger, since the Blacksmith saved his best stuff for holidays and they didn’t dare pull out their own private stashes of moonshine or home brew in his house.

They hung on the Blacksmith’s every word. The doctor, the lawyer and the minister that had married into this family like him. They were hungry, like him, for the land-dowry their wives brought them. But they wanted to start their only family traditions, far from the Blacksmith. They liked being far apart but close enough to each other so that their children would realize they were cousins. Spending time under the Blacksmith’s roof each Sunday they had no way to be on their own, the old man was so demanding. If they were going to have families the way he had one, if they were going to be able to go about their property like the lord of the land, they needed to get away from him. They needed to get back into the real world.

Oh, they all had compliments. “I have married the finest woman I have ever met. She plays the piano. Her father gave us one for an anniversary present for our first year.”

Another would say: “I have married the finest cook in the south. Look at this belly. Gained a few pounds that even my mother couldn’t put on me. Course my mother never had the fine food and table setting that I have with Fawn.”

But they had complaints, too. And the sons-in-law of the Blacksmith had nowhere to take them but to Peter, the Piano Man, who had been in the family far longer then they.

Complaints like: “It’s too bad I had to come today. There’s a nice little pond on my property near one of the groves of peach trees. Prettiest thing you ever saw.”

Or: “I should be with my church members Sunday. They need my guidance.”

Or: “If a man got a position in a Northern university, he would be happy to take his wife with him. But some wives don’t want to leave home. “Plus if you tell them that if you sell the property you got when you married them they could have a finer northern home, live just like they did here, thinking they might be happy they get more than upset. Some women think it would be an insult to sell that property while their father was still alive. What am I going to do with fifty acres of prime farm land on the outskirts of Atlanta?”

So Peter was not surprised when one early spring Sunday Jewel’s husband, Waddell Jackson, the lawyer, who had had more than a few run-ins with those colored people who believed in keeping them in their place, announced that he had been offered a position with a popular colored organization in New York City.

The other husbands thought it was a wonderful opportunity to experience life in another city. They thought it was even more wonderful to have a real, legitimate excuse to get away from the Blacksmith. Sundays in New York, not Sundays on his porch.

Peter wondered if Waddell would try to look for June. He heard through traveling musician friends that she was singing in clubs in the north. In fact he waited for Waddell to ask what places to go to, what things to see.

Instead Waddell told them: “Jewel said she won’t come with me.”

“
But she’s your wife,” Reverend Howard proclaimed. “And the Lord says. . .”

“
Charles, please don’t quote the bible to me right now ’cause the bible ain’t got nothing to do with my problem. The bible doesn’t say anything about that big colored man walking down the street that’s got these daughters of his thinking they can’t be more than five minutes away from him and their mama or the world falls apart.”

“
June left,” Peter said boldly. They all looked at him because none of them had ever bought up that old family secret. Outwardly they all admired Peter for taking on the responsibility of a child. Inwardly they were glad it wasn’t them.

Plus there was the obvious jealousy that he got two plots of fifty acres - one for his wife and one for June’s baby. They all thought it was a sweet deal. He could go back to Alabama whenever he wanted and not have to be ruled by the iron hand of their father-in-law. His wife had a baby to care for and one on the way. He was in good with the old man.

“
I know that,” Waddell continued, mincing his words before the wives came out or the parents returned. “I think that’s what scares her most of all. Nobody in this family has heard from June. Now I’ve been following an organization for years and it’s something I feel good about. They are working on getting better paying jobs for colored people in the north. Jobs that pay them the same for coloreds as white people. They want me for legal council and she doesn’t want to go.”

“
I don’t know about all that.” Charles shook his head and pulled on his collar nervously. “I hear some of them people want to go back to Africa and that they secretly have white folks backing them.”

James Nelson, the doctor and husband to Rosa spoke out. “Charles, you know that isn’t the point. The man here has a chance to make something of himself in another place. What is keeping him here is the unnatural way these women cling to this family. And I don’t use that term ‘unnatural’ loosely.”

Charles tried to defend himself. “A family is not an unnatural thing.”

James looked at him. “Don’t tell me you believe in all this stuff that he puts out. Or are you just a believer so you can get your church more money from his pocket?”

Charles shifted in his seat. He sipped the ice tea. “It’s just that it’s nice, it’s good to see close families. Some men desert their women, don’t even marry them, go off with other women and. . .”

James cut him off in his brisk tongue. “It is nice to have close families, but that’s not what this is all about. William Brown has been trying to be white ever since I’ve known him and I grew up right across the street. I have known him all my life. I have watched him all my life.” Charles shook his head in protest, but James continued.