Читать книгу The Bernice L. McFadden Collection - Bernice L. McFadden - Страница 18

Chapter Nine

How they got away with it for as long as they did was a mystery to me. By the time they were found out, it was way past spring and weeks beyond their first awkward kiss. There had been hundreds of kisses by the time summer swaggered in, bringing with her days upon days of sweltering heat.

It was summer’s heat that drove Sissy’s father, Edgar, off the road into the sparse shade of a pecan tree. If it hadn’t been so hot and Edgar had just kept walking up the road toward home, Sissy and Cole’s affair might have gone undetected for years.

I’ll just sit here a minute and rest, Edgar told himself as he dragged the blue and white kerchief across his damp brow. Weariness crept over him and he braced his back against the bark of the tree, cocked the brim of his hat over his eyes, and soon fell fast asleep.

Further up the road, Cole was sitting in the crook of a gnarly tree limb, working the tip of his mother’s kitchen knife into the bark.

“What you doing up there?”

He looked down to find Sissy squinting at him. Tiny balls of perspiration covered her face, and when she tilted her head, the sun ignited the orbs, gracing her with an undeniable shimmer.

Cole grinned.

With the handle of the knife clenched securely between his teeth, Cole began to make his descent with the assuredness and agility of a monkey. He hit the ground with a large thud.

The lovers glanced warily around before leaning in and stealing a kiss. They crossed the road, climbed over the fence, and moved through the blanket of flowers to the bald spot of earth which had been scuffed talcumsoft by their lovemaking.

She tasted like syrup.

He tasted like his mama’s johnnycakes.

She felt like butter.

He felt like an iron poker warmed in kindling.

An earshot away Edgar woke from his nap, stretched his arms over his head, and released a great yawn. His gaze swept over the field and stopped on a cluster of swaying flowers.

That’s odd, he thought before licking his finger and testing the air to find that it was still as death. He rose to his feet and set off to investigate the phenomenon.

As Edgar moved closer, he heard laughter. He knew that laughter, playful, teasing—lovers’ laughter. He stopped walking.

Out here in the open?

He couldn’t help but smile at the couple’s brazen outrageousness.

“Well,” he muttered aloud as he turned around to leave, “I was young once too.”

His intention was to head home, but his mind kept wandering back to the flowers and the laughter.

Who are they?

It was easy to imagine their heat, their complete surrender to one another—but try as he might, he could not imagine their faces. Curiosity got the better of him and he decided to hang around a little while longer, just to see what they looked like.

He returned to the shade to wait. He couldn’t imagine that the couple would go on for much longer—not in that heat.

Cole rolled off Sissy and onto his back. His penis slumped lazily across his thigh. Sissy reached for his hand, pulled it to her mouth, and slipped his fingers between her lips. Cole began to giggle.

They lay there in that field as if it were their own home and the ground beneath them their bed.

“I gotta go.”

“I know.” He turned onto his side and gazed deep into her eyes. “I’m already missing you,” he breathed, and then leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss against her lips. “Let’s run away together and get married.”

Sissy laughed. “Who would marry us? A white boy and his nigger mistress?” She laughed again, but this time the notes were flat.

Cole’s eyes dimmed. “You ain’t no nigger. I hate that word.”

“Come on,” she said brightly, “help me up.”

From where Edgar sat, it seemed as if Cole had emerged from the soil and unfurled like some exotic flower. An exotic, naked flower.

Edgar wasn’t yet over the first shock when he was rattled by the second. His heart dropped down into his gut when the brown-skinned girl appeared.

Edgar stood up and took a few steps forward. “What colored girl … ?” he mumbled to himself, and then realized it was his own daughter.

He didn’t even know he was running until the tunnel of wind he created tore his hat from his head.

Sissy was still trying to get her arm into the sleeve of her dress when she looked up and saw her father charging toward them.

“Sissy!”

Cole spun around and jumped protectively in front of her. His green eyes flashed, and Edgar stalled.

Edgar knew he could beat Cole with one hand, if he had to. He was a full foot taller and twenty pounds heavier, but there were shadows swimming in his blind anger, and the line that separated black from white coiled into noose; imagined or not, Edgar could feel the rough rope fibers brushing against his neck.

Edgar took a very deep breath.

“Sissy, come here.”

“You don’t have to go with him, Sissy!” Cole barked.

“She’s my child, Cole, you done enough. Lemme take her home.” Edgar’s tone was replete with disappointment and defeat.

Sissy dropped her head. She wiggled the remaining length of arm through the sleeve and stepped shamefully away from Cole.

“Daddy I—”

Edgar shook his head. He didn’t want to hear any of it.

What could she have said to him to make what she had done—had been doing—all right? That she was sorry? That she was—God forbid—in love with Cole Payne? No words she could speak would ever be powerful enough to change the fact that Cole was white and she was black and this was Mississippi, U.S. of A.

Edgar’s long, brown face was etched with sadness and when Sissy finally looked at him, it broke her heart to see that she had broken his.

She would have gladly taken a beating—a million beatings—if it would place the happy back onto her father’s face.

“Let’s go home,” Edgar said before turning and walking away. Sissy followed, weeping into her hands.

Edgar never uttered a word about the discovery to his wife or to God. He didn’t have to; Sissy never wanted to see her father look at her in that way again, and so the next time she saw Cole Payne—she didn’t see Cole Payne. And whenever Cole called down to her from his waiting place in the tree, Sissy held her head straight and hastened her pace.

It went on like that for some weeks, until Cole finally understood that it was over. He didn’t accept it though, and remained awake at night trying to figure out ways he could get Sissy back. The boy was so distraught, so out of his mind with longing, that he took to lying in the field beneath the afternoon sun dressed in nothing but his drawers. Why? Well, to get dark, of course!

He stupidly thought that if he was a darker shade of white, Sissy’s father might accept him. But all he got for his effort was sunburn and a slight case of sun poisoning.

Cole’s parents didn’t know what was wrong with him. His father told him that he’d take him out to the shed and beat the sense back into him if he didn’t shape up and stop acting crazy.

Turns out, Cole didn’t need a beating from his father, all he needed was to see Sissy strolling hand-inhand with Mac Gosling, and just like that his broken heart turned to dust. You know, dust barely has any feeling at all.

A few months after the sighting, Sissy and Mac Gosling married. Throughout the better part of her marriage, and certainly for as long as her father breathed air, Sissy did not dare allow her mind to run on Cole Payne. But I know that when Edgar passed away, and he lay serene and silent in his casket, unable to dish out penalty or retribution, Sissy did allow her mind to wander back to that amazing spring and loved-filled summer, and the memories raised a smile amidst her tears.

Cole, well, he let go of the idea of having Sissy as his wife, but try as he might, he couldn’t push the memories out of reach. Sometimes nostalgia got the best of him and he’d try to recreate the magic they had. It was despicable and embarrassing to watch him usher one white girl after the other to that fence.

He told them to laugh and say: Your mama made johnnycakes; they taste like a little piece of heaven.

The girls, they did as he asked.

Anything for Cole Payne.

“Your mama made johnnycakes; they taste like a little piece heaven.”

Again.

“Your mama made johnnycakes; they taste like a little piece of heaven.”

Again!

“Your mama made johnnycakes; they taste like a little piece of heaven!”

The melody was never quite right and the girls always cried when they saw the regret shining in his eyes.