SIX
June 1935
The sound of an arriving automobile prickled May’s sensitive ears and caused the little hairs on the back of her neck to rise. Not only was Sunday the Lord’s Day, it was also May’s single day off. She’d only just settled into her favorite armchair, the sole thing she’d inherited from her mama. The armrests and headrests were still covered with doilies her mama had tatted. May had spent the morning praising, and she’d hoped to spend the afternoon collecting her own thoughts, maybe even dozing a bit, while hiding from the heat. The car horn blew. She drew a fortifying breath and pushed herself up.
She cast a glance in the mirror and patted back her hair, then used her palms to straighten out the creases in her skirt. Who the hell would be coming by now? she wondered, opening the front door and leaning toward the screen. The searing light of the early-afternoon sun bore down hard, squashing the shadows of everything beneath it flat to the earth, then flared up as it reflected off the hood of a shiny new black car. The flash dazzled her eyes. The driver slowed, doing his best to avoid the ruts in the yard.
May felt her jaw tighten. She didn’t recognize the car—most folk around here couldn’t afford a rusting Tin Lizzie, let alone one of the new chrome barges with round fenders. She crossed her arms tight over her chest and took a wider stance. She bit her lower lip. She didn’t recognize the face of the porkpie-hatted dandy driving the car, but she sure as shooting recognized the face of the fool woman sitting beside him, in spite of her dyed-red Myrna Loy hairdo. The car came to a stop, and the driver killed the engine. May pushed through the screeching screen door and went to stand on her front porch, knowing damned well that while the fading haint blue her mama had made her paint the overhang might keep away the boo hags, it wouldn’t do diddly to keep out this Jezebel, this murderer.
Her eyes locked with Betty’s, but Betty looked away and turned to face the car’s backseat. The door behind Mr. Porkpie opened. May’s grandbaby Poppy slid out and ran to her, arms outstretched. “Nana Wills,” the girl cried, and the love May felt caused her heart to leap in her breast. The car’s other back door opened, and Opal climbed out with Jilo in her arms.
Coward, May thought, returning her focus to the woman who used to be her daughter-in-law. Sending the children first. Jilo squirmed in her sister’s arms, and Opal sat her on her feet, taking the tiny girl’s arm as she tottered along. Poppy bounded up the steps, and May knelt and took her in her arms, placing a thousand kisses over the girl’s sweet face.
May heard the car’s front doors open, and she looked up to see that Porkpie had moved around to the car’s rear. He popped the trunk while Betty swung her nylon-covered legs out and found footing. She took a few sauntering steps toward the house, barely covered by a new and way-too-tight crimson dress. “It’s good to see you, May,” she said, her tone guarded. She held her head back and a bit to the right, looking down her nose at May. Her eyes were challenging, but a smile parted her haughty face.
May had to fight the urge to fly from her porch, across the patchy dry grass, and slap Betty’s smile right off her. Seeming to read May’s struggle, Betty stopped a good distance back. This woman. This harlot. She had begged, coaxed, and harangued Jesse, threatening to leave him unless he moved his family to Charleston. Roosevelt’s New Deal money had begun floating into the state through the South Carolina Emergency Relief Administration, and rumor had it there were going to be riches for everyone, white and colored alike. The fool girl had thought Charleston would be an electric-lit land of milk and honey.
Six months after the move, May received the telegraph saying Jesse got himself killed when scaffolding collapsed, sending a rain of bricks down on him. Your son I stole from you is dead. Stop. Send money to bury him among strangers. Stop. Of course, those weren’t the cable’s actual words, but that was how May’s heart remembered them. May hadn’t been able to stop Jesse from leaving, let alone from getting himself killed, but she had managed to get him brought home. Jesse now rested between his own father and May’s mother. The spot she had always believed would be her own resting place.
“May, I want you to meet Walter Williams,” Betty said, placing one hand on her hip. Betty seemed proud, like she was showing off a prize pig at the state fair.
May examined the dark, round-faced fellow. A good three inches shorter than Betty, and a good three inches wider, too. Walter Williams, my eye. Porkpie, a cardboard suitcase in each hand, sidled up beside Betty. The Depression seemed to have spared Porkpie, seeing as he had both a new car and a spare tire around his waist. He didn’t fit May’s image of what a gangster should look like, but she couldn’t imagine how else a man could come by the cash for a chariot like this these days. He set the cases down and doffed his hat.
“Ma’am,” he said, looking at her with a wide smile. His gaze turned instantly back to Betty, and May realized the poor fool was in love.
“What’re those for?” May asked, taking a couple of steps forward to the edge of her porch. “This ain’t no hotel, and you sure ain’t moving in here with that man.”
Betty laughed, a careless sound pealing from a careless woman. “Opal,” Betty called her daughter, never taking her wary eyes off May. The spindly girl let go of Jilo, who scooted off to explore, and took hold of the cases. She set them down in front of the porch steps and looked to her grandmother, not seeming to know what to do next.
“Those are for the girls,” Betty said. “Walter and I, we going on to Atlanta. The girls wanted to stop off here a bit and visit with their nana, ain’t that right, Opal?”
May’s eyes fixed on the young girl’s face. Opal’s worried gaze drifted down, and her lips began to work, but no sound came out. May’s heart nearly broke at the sight. “You bring those cases up here then, girl,” she said to her oldest grandbaby. Opal’s eyes shot up to meet May’s, and a hopeful smile spread across her face. Poor little thing believed I might turn her away, May thought, an even deeper resentment toward Betty growing in her heart. What kind of stories has that creature been telling the babies about me?
“Yes’m,” the girl said, her face now radiant. She grabbed the first case with both hands and hauled it up to May’s side, then skittered back down and managed the second, which seemed a tad heavier. May would have helped the girl, but she didn’t trust herself to be even a single inch closer to Opal’s mother.
“What you going to Atlanta for?” May asked, pulling Opal close and laying a protective hand on her head.
“Walter has business there,” Betty responded. May scanned the new auto, its scintillating chrome causing spots to rise before her eyes.
“She a beauty, ain’t she? She’s a Chrysler Airstream.” He smiled, oblivious to May’s disdain. “Only thing prettier is my lady here.” He reached up to place his arm around Betty’s shoulder.
“It’s too hot, baby.” Betty flashed the man a smile, but stepped quickly forward, sliding out from under his embrace.
“That explains why . . . Walter”—May very nearly used her interior moniker for the man—“is going. Why are you going?”
Betty reached back and, seeming to forget her earlier avoidance of his touch, took Porkpie’s arm. She beamed and flashed May the most sincere smile May had ever seen on her ex-daughter-in-law’s face. “Walter here has arranged for me to have an audition with Ty King and His Golden Syncopation Swing.”
“An audition?” May crossed her arms.
“Yeah, I’m gonna sing for Mr. King . . .”
“I know what an audition is,” May snapped, but her gaze caught hold of Jilo, still toddling around, chasing after a fat bumblebee. To her disbelief, the bee hovered over the child’s outstretched hand for a moment and then landed on it. Rather than startling or trying to run away, Jilo pulled her hand closer and stared intently at the insect. May got the oddest feeling that the two were somehow communicating, and the thought made her feel real uneasy. “Opal, honey,” she said, “you go fetch Jilo before she gets herself stung, and take your sisters inside.”
She scanned Opal’s thin face. “You hungry?” she asked. When her grandbaby didn’t answer, she called out to Betty, “You feed these girls their lunch yet?”
Betty began to speak, but May answered her own question. “No, ’course you haven’t.” The scrawny things probably hadn’t even had their breakfast. Forcing her anger down, she placed her hand on Opal’s back and gave her a gentle nudge. “Go on, get Jilo inside, and Nana will come in and fix you girls something real good. All right?”
Opal nodded and scrambled down the steps. “Jilo,” she called out to the littlest one. Jilo spun around, arms held high overhead. “Come on, Nana says it’s time to eat.” May was relieved to see the bee rise up and take to the air.
Opal bent to try and lift the girl, but Jilo was having none of it. She pulled back from her sister, intent on making the trip under her own steam, but then stopped and took Opal’s steadying hand after a half-dozen steps. Nearing the porch, Jilo let go of Opal and crawled up the steps. May looked down at the smiling face creeping up to greet her. May didn’t give a pea-picker’s damn that the child’s face didn’t look a thing like her boy’s. This was her grandbaby every bit as much as Jilo’s older sisters were.
“Go on and take your sisters inside. Nana will get the bags.” Opal herded her younger sisters past the screech of the screen door and into the darkening house.
May reached through the still-open screen door and pulled the main door shut. The spring on the screen door groaned and snapped as it closed with a thwack. “Let’s just say you do get this ‘singing’ job,” May made sure her disapproval rang through. It wasn’t that Betty couldn’t sing, for the woman certainly could, but May knew there was a hell of a lot more going on in those Atlanta clubs than singing. “Who’s going to look after the girls while you’re out all night?”
Betty rolled her eyes, but only a little. “You saw Opal. She’s practically a mother to the other girls already. She always looking after them, bathing ’em, feeding them.”
Betty’s words confirmed May’s worst fears. “She don’t have much of a choice about that, now does she?”
Betty’s face froze at the older woman’s words. There was no doubt in May’s mind that Betty had finished with being a mother. May and Reuben had hoped for a household full of children, but Jesse was the only one her womb had allowed her to carry. And now the selfish woman who’d robbed her of her only child was shirking the responsibility of her own babies’ care, all so she could be this buffoon’s fancy woman.
May felt like screaming, but instead bent down and grasped the handles of the suitcases. “Not much more trouble cooking for you two, if you want to come in.” It would take all her strength to allow this woman back under her roof, but never let it be said May refused anyone hospitality, even the likes of these two. As expected, Porkpie’s eyes lit up.
“Thank you, no,” Betty rushed through her response. “We should be getting on. It’s best if we get out of these parts and make it into Atlanta before sunset. Ain’t that right, Walter?”
As silly as Betty could be, this time May knew she was right. It wouldn’t be wise for a black man to be driving his shiny new automobile around these roads after sunset.
“We could stay a few . . .” Porkpie began, but then he caught something on Betty’s face, something the glare hid from May’s view. “Yes, I reckon it would be best to be getting on. But thank you for your kind offer, ma’am.”
“You at least gonna come in and get the girls settled?” May asked.
“No, no,” Betty said. “I think they’ll do better if we just slip away now.” She turned quickly on her heels and strode toward the car.
Porkpie doffed his hat once more. “Mrs. Wills.” He scurried to open Betty’s door.
“You just remember”—he stopped at the sound of May’s voice—“that that woman with you was once Mrs. Wills, too, and she got three girls here who need their mama.”
“Go on,” Betty commanded Porkpie. He nodded several times in quick succession, whether in response to her or May, May would never know. As soon as Porkpie opened the passenger door, Betty slid into her seat, backside first, and swung her legs up through the opening. Once she was settled, he jogged with a heavy gait around the front of the car to the driver’s side and opened his door. “Ma’am,” he called out once more, then hopped into the driver’s seat and closed the door with loving care behind him.
May hurried down the porch steps, managing to grab ahold of the opening in the passenger side’s window just as Porkpie fired up the engine. Betty’s eyes flashed, and her lips pursed as she looked out at May.
“When you coming back?” May asked.
“Soon,” was all Betty offered. She rolled the window up and patted Porkpie’s arm. He shifted the car into drive, leaving May to watch as it jostled away across the roots and ruts of her yard.