Roy
Davina didn’t do me that way. When I came calling, she opened her home. She opened herself. Celestial, my lawfully wedded, is playing me like Fort Knox. Walter tried to warn me. I was prepared to stomach that there had been another man, maybe even other men. A woman’s only human. I’m not naïve. Nobody survives prison being cute. But when a woman doesn’t divorce you, puts money on your books, and doesn’t change the locks on you—under these circumstances a man might think that he has a chance. And when you lean in to kiss her, she lets you, when you lead her by the hand to a bedroom, you know that you weren’t imagining the whole thing. I’ve been away five years, but not so long that I don’t remember how the world works.
Do you have protection?
She knew I didn’t. I came to her ready but not prepared. She is my wife. How would she feel if I broke out with a rubber? She wouldn’t take it that I was being considerate; she would take it that I thought she had been sleeping around. Why couldn’t it be like it was in New York, when we were almost strangers? How many times, when I was away, did I recall that first night? I flicked through all the details, a silent movie in my mind, and I guarantee there was no latex on the set. That night in Brooklyn, I felt like Captain America; I didn’t even care that I lost my tooth defending her honor. You don’t get that many opportunities to be a hero like that. Now she wants to act like it never happened.
I threw the bedsheet to the floor and straggled the house in the buff, searching for somewhere to lay my nappy head. The master bedroom was out of the question for obvious reasons, so I settled myself in the sewing room and flopped on the futon, although it was a little short for a man my size. The room was cluttered with poupées in various stages of creation. Beside the sewing machine was a cloth head, box brown, and a few pairs of arms topped with waving hands. I won’t lie and say it wasn’t disturbing. But I was already disturbed when I stormed in there.
The finished dolls sat up on a shelf, looking patient and friendly. I thought of Celestial’s assistant—was her name Tamara? I thought of her big, healthy boy. When Celestial left the room to get their coats, the girl touched my arm with her blue-green fingernails. “You are going to have to let her go,” she said. “Break your own heart, or they will break it for you.” My anger rose up the way smoke does, thick and suffocating. There was only one thing to say, but it wasn’t fit for polite company. “I’m telling you,” she said. “Because I know what you don’t. It’s not going to be on purpose, but you’re going to get hurt.” I was trying to figure out what kind of game this little girl was playing when Celestial returned with the coats and kissed the baby like he was her own.
It was maybe three o’clock in the morning; these were drunk thoughts, even though I wasn’t drinking. I reached up on the shelf, pulled down one of the dolls and punched it in the face. The soft head dented before it sprang back, still smiling. I stretched out on the futon, with my feet hanging over the edge, but I couldn’t get comfortable. I got up, crept down the hallway and stood outside the room where Celestial was sleeping, but I couldn’t bring myself to try the knob. If she locked the door against me, I didn’t want to know.
Back in the workroom, I picked up the phone and dialed Davina, who answered sounding frightened, as anyone would be at this hour.
“Hey, Davina, it’s Roy,” I said.
“And?”
“I wanted to say hello,” I told her.
“Well, you just did,” she said back. “Satisfied?”
“Don’t hang up. Please stay on the line. Let me say how much I appreciate you spending time with me. For being so nice.”
“Roy,” she said with a little melt in her voice. “You safe? You don’t sound solid. Where are you?”
“Atlanta.” After that, I didn’t have much in the way of words. There’s not many women who will hold the phone and listen to a grown man cry over another woman, but Davina Hardrick waited until I was able to say, “Davina?”
“I’m here.”
She didn’t say, I forgive you. But I was grateful for those two words just the same.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said.
“Go on to sleep. Like they say, weeping endures for a night.”
“But joy comes in the morning,” I finished. This is the promise spoken at every Baptist funeral. I thought of my mama, and I asked Davina if she had been there for her home-going.
“Did you see Celestial and Andre? Were they together then?”
Davina said, “Why do you care so much?”
“Because I do.”
“I’ll tell you this. I saw them afterward when I was picking up some hours at the Saturday Nighter for my uncle Earl. They came in and started getting drunk in the middle of the day, her especially. I don’t think they were together, but it was coming. You could taste it on the breeze, like rain on the way. When he went to the bathroom, she leaned across the bar and said to me, ‘I am a terrible person.’ ”
“She said that? My wife?”
“Yeah. That was her exact words. Then old boy came back and she got herself together. Five minutes later, they were gone.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s all. Later on, your daddy came in. Black dirt on his clothes from head to toe. People say he buried your mother with his own two hands.”
I held the receiver hard, pressing it against my ear, like that would make me less alone. I wasn’t even a week out of prison and already I felt caged again, like a woman had used a length of clothesline to bind me to a chair. You hear these stories about men who shoplift a beer right in front of the security cameras so they can get sent back to the joint, to get back to where they know what to expect. I wouldn’t do something like that, but I’m not mystified by the choice. Pulling a soft lap blanket over my hips, I thought about Walter, my father the Ghetto Yoda, and I wondered what he would say about all of this.
Davina said, “You there?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Get some rest. It’s hard at first, for everybody. Take care of yourself,” she said with a calming voice like a lullaby.
“Davina, I was thinking to tell you something. I’ve been thinking back.”
“Yeah?”
“I remember a boy named Hopper.”
“Was he okay?” Her voice was so low that I couldn’t say for sure that I actually heard it, yet I knew what she said.
“He was doing okay. That’s why I didn’t remember him, because there wasn’t much to remember.”
When I hung up, the large orange clock over the sewing machine announced that it was three thirty, a perfect right-angle o’clock. I figured Andre was at my father’s house, likely sleeping in my bed. In the dark, I smiled a little bit, picturing Andre’s expression when Big Roy told him I was gone to Atlanta. He was probably dressed in jeans and a T-shirt like an average person, but in my mind’s eye he was always wearing that skinny gray suit he wore for my mother’s services. Oh Mama, I thought. What would she think if she could see me now, sleeping on the couch in my own house, surrounded by happy baby dolls that Celestial was going to sell for $150 a pop?
“Only in Atlanta.” I said it out loud before I finally figured out how to sleep.