The Summer That Melted Everything(44)

I picked up my shirt I’d taken off to use as a sweat rag. But I couldn’t go. Not before I knew.

“Why you hate Sal so much, Mr. Elohim?”

He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief as he sat down on the roof. I think he must have gotten sweat in his eyes from the way he blinked.

“Some folks think just ’cause I set her plate at mealtimes, wash her clothes, wear this weddin’ ring that I don’t know my Helen is dead. I know she is. Did you know she was an art historian? Yep, sure was. And in 1956, she went to France, to look at a paintin’. I missed her terribly, probably more than I should’ve.

“One night I had a little too much to drink. I stumbled to the phone and called her hotel room in Paris. A man answered. An American. A nigger.”

He bit his fingernail off and swallowed it before saying, “I could tell that’s what he was. They got a different sound. Sure ain’t the sound of a white man.

“I hung up. Dialed the operator, told her to get the number for God. She never did say nothin’, just laughed. I hung up on her too. It wasn’t God I really wanted anyways. They say if you wanna get things done, you gotta get hold of the devil.

“So I picked up the phone again, but I didn’t dial nothin’, I just waited. The dial tone hummed in my ear, then it crackled and I knew. I knew he had picked up.”

I shifted beside him. “He?”

“The devil. I told ’im what I wanted. Told ’im I wanted Helen home. He didn’t say nothin’, but I knew he understood. The next day I got a call from Helen. I asked her ’bout the man who answered her phone. She said it was just a hotel worker, bringin’ more towels and for me not to worry ’cause she was comin’ home early. Had booked passage on the Andrea Doria, she said. Wasn’t I happy? she asked.”

He fell quiet, and together we watched a hawk go flying by. When it landed, he spoke again, rather low in the chest. “The so-called hotel worker came to her funeral. A tall son-of-a-bitch. I recognized his voice when he came up to me to offer his condolences. I hated the way he bent down to talk to me, like I was a damn child. Told ’im that. Told ’im I thought it funny he would come all that way from Paris for a woman he’d just brought towels to.”

The silence that followed was like practicing for death. That lonely silence that describes the dark so well. A fly came and landed on the back of his hand. I shooed it away for him because he just sat there, a concreted form, heavy and still.

“Mr. Elohim? You okay?”

His head seemed unsteady on his neck as he said, “Turned out he was a painter. An artist. I suppose they like that distinction. I saw his work years later in a museum up in Cleveland. He had a paintin’ called the Andrea Doria. It didn’t have the ship in it, though.” He bit and swallowed another fingernail. “It had Helen. Beautiful paintin’, I’ll give ’im that.”

His trembling hands gripped his knees.

“My momma, God rest her soul, used to say a black boy is only good till he reaches thirteen. After that, he’s man bound, and a black man’s no good for nothin’, especially since they passed all them laws on workin’ ’em.

“I thought of my momma and what she had said as that man shook my hand at Helen’s funeral. I thought, gee, if only someone had stopped him from growin’ up. Just ate his future away, I would still have mine.”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do, really, except lay my hand on his back and pat like I’d seen Dad do before.

Elohim slowly turned to me. “Don’t pat my back like I’m a damn dog, boy. I’m a man, for Christ’s sake.” He stood, trying his best to make himself taller. “I think you better go on home. And, Fielding, keep all I just said to yourself. I shouldn’t even have said it. It’s just sometimes you don’t say nothin’ for so long, you forget why ya shut up in the first place. Oh, and Fielding? You might wanna let that boy know somethin’.”

“What?”

“Dovey lost that baby.”

He didn’t say it cruelly. Nor did he say it as if it were a victory for him and his. He said it like a man tired of describing what lost means.





13

Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks

—MILTON, PARADISE LOST 1:302

I’VE NEVER BEEN married, though when I was twenty-eight, I was close to it. Got the tux and everything. Even went to the church. She was a lovely girl. Maybe a little too much hair. She was always putting this white cream on her upper lip. I’d walk into the bathroom, and there’d she’d be, snow on the face.

Years after we were to be married, I would hear she died in a car crash in Minnesota. They didn’t find the accident right away. The state was in the middle of a blizzard, and by the time they come upon the car, only its roof was visible. Windshield was in a bad way. They knew she’d been ejected. They shined a flashlight around. Beam, beam, beam. Saw something a few feet out. It was her lips. That was all that was seen. The rest of her was covered by snow.

Snow on the face, and I’ve hated Minnesota ever since.

I don’t know. Maybe I should’ve married her, but when I got to the church, I found myself staring up at its steeple. I didn’t have a ladder, so I had to stand on the outside sill of a window and reach up and grab the gutter. Then I just pulled myself up. I used to be strong like that. They heard my feet walking across the roof, that’s what they said when they all came out of the church to stare up at me. Said they heard a noise and came out to see.