Victory Over Japan (8 page)

“I'll be putting napkins in your lap and cutting up your steak if you'll go out with me,” he said. “We'll go someplace nice. Anywhere you want.”

“What time?”

“I have to go to a meeting first. A community meeting where I live. I'm chairman of my neighborhood association. It might be eight or nine before I can get away. Is that too late?” He had closed his briefcase and was standing up.

“I'll be waiting,” she said. He locked the briefcase and came out from beside the table. “Don't lose that check,” he said. It was still sitting on the edge of the counter. The circle of water was closing in. “Don't get it wet. It would be a lot of trouble to get them to make another one.”

When he was gone Rhoda straightened up the house and made the bed. She put all the dishes in the dishwasher and watered the plants. She cleaned off the counters one by one. She moved the watering can and wiped up the ring of water. Then she picked up the check and read the amount. Four thousand six hundred and forty-three dollars. Eight months of freedom at five hundred dollars a month. And forty-three dollars to waste. I'll waste it today, she decided. She picked up the phone and called the beauty parlor.

Six o'clock is the time of day in New Orleans when the light cools down, coming in at angles around the tombs in the cemeteries, between the branches of the live oak trees along the avenues, casting shadows across the yards, penetrating the glass of a million windows.

Rhoda always left the drapes open in the afternoons so she could watch the light travel around the house. She would turn on “The World of Jazz” and dress for dinner while the light moved around the rooms. Two hours, she thought, dropping her clothes on the floor of her bedroom. Two hours to make myself into a goddess. She shaved her legs and gave herself a manicure and rubbed perfumed lotion all over her body and started trying on clothes. Rhoda had five closets full of clothes. She had thousands of dollars' worth of skirts and jackets and blouses and dresses and shoes and scarves and handbags.

She opened a closet in the hall. She took out a white lace dress she had worn one night to have dinner with a senator. She put the soft silk-lined dress on top of her skin. Then, one by one, she buttoned up every one of the fifty-seven tiny pearl buttons of the bodice and sleeves. The dress had a blue silk belt. Rhoda dropped it on the closet floor. She opened a drawer and found a red scarf and tied it around the waist of the dress. She looked in the mirror. It was almost right. But not quite right. She took one of Jody's old ties off a tie rack and tied that around the waist. There, that was perfect. “A Brooks Brothers' tie,” she said out loud. “The one true tie of power.”

She went into the kitchen and took a bottle of wine out of the refrigerator and poured herself a glass and began to walk around the house. She stopped in the den and put a Scott Joplin record on the stereo and then she began to dance, waving the wineglass in the air, waiting for Earl to come. She danced into the bedroom and took the check out of a drawer where she had hidden it and held it up and kissed it lavishly all over. Jesus loves the little children, she was singing. All the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious, precious, precious. Four thousand, six hundred and forty-three dollars and thirty-seven cents. A day's work. At last, a real day's work.

The doorbell was ringing. She set the wineglass down on the table and walked wildly down the hall to the door. “I'm coming,” she called out. “I'll be right there.”

“Now what I'd really like to do with you,” Earl was saying, “is to go fishing.” They were at Dante's by the River, a restaurant down at the end of Carrollton Avenue. They had stuffed themselves on Crab Thibodeaux and Shrimp Mousse and Softshell Crabs Richard and were starting in on the roast quail. It was a recipe with a secret sauce perfected in Drew, Mississippi, where Earl's grandfather had been horsewhipped on the street for smarting off to a white man. But that was long ago and the sauce tasted wonderful to Rhoda and Earl.

“I'm stuffed,” she said. “How can I eat all this? I won't be able to move, much less make love to you. I am going to make love to you, you know that, don't you?”

“If you say so,” he said. “Now, listen, Miss Rhoda, did you hear what I said about going fishing?”

“What about it?”

“I want to take you fishing. I'm famous for my fishing. I won a fishing rodeo one time.”

“We don't have to do it tonight, do we? I mean, I have other plans for tonight as I just told you.”

“We'll pretend we're fishing,” he said. “How about that?” He was laughing at her but she didn't care. Black people had laughed at Rhoda all her life. All her life she had been making black people laugh.

“What are you thinking of?” he said.

“I was thinking about when I was little and my mother would take me to Mississippi for the summer and if I wanted attention I would take off my underpants and the black people would all die laughing and the white people would grab me up and make me put them back on. Well, I guess that's a racist thing to say, isn't it?”

“You want to see if it makes me laugh?”

“Yeah, I do. So hurry up and finish eating. When I think of something I like to go right on and do it. In case they blow the world up while I'm waiting.” Earl took a piece of French toast and buttered it and laid it on her plate. “Are you sure you aren't married, Earl? I made a vow not to mess around with married men. I've had enough of that stuff. That's why I'm getting a divorce. Because I kept having these affairs and I'd have to go home and eat dinner and there the other person would be. With no one to eat dinner with. That doesn't seem right, does it? After they'd made love to me all afternoon? So I'm getting a divorce. Now I'll have to be poor for a while but I don't care. It's better than being an adultress, don't you think so?” She picked up the bread and put it back on his plate.

“Why don't you stop talking and finish your quail?”

“I can't stop talking when I'm nervous. It's how I protect myself.” She pulled her hand back into her lap. Rhoda hated to be reminded that she talked too much.

“I'm not married,” he said. “I told you that on the phone. I've got a little boy and I keep him part of the time. Remember, we talked about that before. It's all right. There isn't anything to be afraid of.” He felt like he did when he coached his Little League baseball team. That's the way she made him feel. One minute she reminded him of a movie star. The next minute she reminded him of a little boy on his team who sucked his glove all the time. “We've got plenty of time to get to know each other. We don't have to hurry to do anything.”

“Tell me about yourself,” she said. “Tell me all the good parts first. You can work in the bad parts later.”

“Well, I'm the oldest one of thirteen children. I worked my way through Mississippi Southern playing football. Then I spent three years in the Marines and now I'm in insurance. Last year I ran for office. I ran for councilman in my district and I lost but I'm going to run again. This time I'll win.” He squared his shoulders. “What else? I love my family. I helped put my brothers and sisters through school. I'm proud of that.” He stopped a moment and looked at her. “I've never known anyone like you. I changed shirts three times trying to get ready to come and get you.”

“That's enough,” she said. “Pay for this food and let's get out of here.”

“My grandmother was a free woman from Natchez,” he continued. They were in the car driving along the Avenue. “A light-skinned woman, what you'd call an octoroon. She lived until last year. She was so old she lost count of the years. Her father was a man who fought with Morrell's army. I have pictures of many of my ancestors. They were never slaves…you sure you want to hear all this?”

“Yeah, I want to know who I'm going to bed with.”

“You talk some. You have a turn.”

“I have two sons. They go to school in Virginia. They're real wild. Everyone in my family's wild. It's a huge family, a network over five states. I love them but they don't have any power over me anymore. Not that they ever did. I think I'm the first person in my family to ever really escape from it. It's taken me a long time to do it. Now I'm free. I might learn to fly. I might teach in a grade school. I might be a waitress. I might move to Europe. I might learn to sew and take up hems. I don't know what I'm going to do next. But right now I'm going to go home and fuck you. I'm tired of waiting to do it. I've been waiting all day.”

“So have I,” he said and pulled her closer to him.

“Another thing,” she said. “I stole that money from you. I sold that diamond ring you paid me for. I sold it to this fat piggy little Jewish boy on Melepomene. He paid me in cash and told me I could file a claim. I'm thinking of reporting him to the Jewish temple. Well, he thought it up. But I'm the one that did it.”

“Did you see that mule?” Earl said. “That mule flying by. That's the damndest thing. A gray mule with black ears.”

“I stole the money from you,” she said. “The money for the diamond. Don't you care? Don't you even care?” She moved his hand from around her waist and put it between her legs.

“That's the damndest thing about those mules when they get to town,” he said, turning down the street to her house. “You can't keep them on the ground. They'll take off every time. Also, I am married. I guess we might as well go on and get that on the table.”

“What mule,” Rhoda said. “I don't see any mules. They don't allow mules on Saint Charles Avenue.”

LADY Margaret Sarpie felt terrible. The city of New Orleans was covered by a mile of clouds. The bathroom scales said 134. Her cousin, Devoie, had decided to stay another week. And the phone kept ringing. It had been ringing all morning. First it would ring. Then Lady Margaret would answer it. Then nothing.

“Hello,” Lady Margaret would say. “Hello. Hello. Who's there? Who is it? Why are you calling me? Why are you doing this to me?”

Lady Margaret's father had been a brigadier general in the army. People weren't supposed to call Lady Margaret and hang up. They weren't even supposed to look at her unless she told them to.

She got a dial tone and called her mother to see if she could borrow the house in Mandeville for a few days. “It's that Anna Hand that's doing it. Or some of her friends. Her friends could be anybody. She could know gangsters.”

“Then what did you write about her for? If you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas, Lady Margaret. I've told you that. Those people at the newspaper only want to use your name. They don't care what happens next.”

“I didn't write about her. I reviewed her book. It could be the beginning of big things for me, Momma. When they called and asked me to do it I was bowled over. You could have knocked me over with a broomstick.”

“And now these gangsters are calling you up and you have to go and hide in Mandeville? Well, we reap what we sow.”

“Can I have the house or not? Devoie's here. She's going with me.”

“Armand's there. You can't go until he leaves.”

“Why did you let Armand go? He sold his half. Every time I want to go Armand's there. I mean, what's wrong with Armand getting his own summer house now that he sold out of ours. Every single time I want to go Armand's there. You might remember I'm your daughter. You might give that some thought…you might act like…” But Mrs. Sarpie had hung up. That was how the Sarpies ended their conversations with each other. Whoever got fed up, hung up.

Lady Margaret put the phone down on its receiver and began to pace up and down the living room, feeling the grainy surface of the oriental rug beneath her feet. The rug was very old and wrinkled in the center. The texture of the rug came up through the soles of Lady Margaret's feet, moved into her bloodstream, arrived at her tongue. Her mouth felt dry, grainy and dry. Some terrible memory of the desert assailed her. The desert, and captive women weaving in the sun, spitting out the threads, weaving and spitting, spitting and weaving.

I could catch anything from this rug, she thought. God knows where this rug's been.

It was hot in the room. The air pressed against her arms. A ceiling fan turned slowly above her head. The air was thick and close, thick and tight. Lady Margaret could hardly breathe. She lay her fingers against her throat, searching for the pulse. She closed her eyes and imagined air-conditioning. Being poor wasn't working out. Being poor and living in a shotgun apartment wasn't working out. It was terrible. It wasn't working out. Nothing was working out.

I need some Homer, she decided. I'll listen to Homer. Homer'll fix me up. She took a Homer Davis album out of its cover and set it down on the turntable. She looked down at the cover, at the black face with the wild teeth and the terrible patch over one eye. The patch was black with a star in the center where the eye used to be. One night when she was drunk Lady Margaret had sat beside Homer on a piano bench at Tipitina's. She had put a twenty-dollar bill into the tip jar and sat beside him while he played, her hip almost touching his hip. He had gone on playing as if she wasn't even there. The song was called “Parchman Farm.” When it was over he lifted his hands from the keys and turned to her. He reached up and removed the patch from his eye. Lady Margaret had stared into the darkness of the scar. She could not stop looking. She could not pull her eyes away.

“What you want to hear now, white lady?” Homer had said. “What you want Homer Davis to play for you?”

The music started. The strange deadly voice filled the room. “Am I getting through to you…that's what I want to know…am I getting through to you…that's what I'm wondering about….” Lady Margaret moved through the house, swaying to the music. Through the dining room and into the bedroom where her cousin, Devoie Denery, was passed out on the bed, the pale blue sheets wrapped around her legs, her blond crotch wild and exposed, her breasts fallen against her arm. Devoie was an actress. Even in sleep she posed. What is she dreaming? Lady Margaret wondered. What outrageous performance is she watching on the screen of her mind? Devoie sighed and pursed out her lips, sinking further into the pillow. “Wake up,” Lady Margaret said. “It's eleven o'clock in the morning. I promised Settle we'd go with him to the races. Don't you remember, Devoie? You said you'd go.”