An American Marriage(46)

She was serious, but I laughed anyway. “I didn’t know there was a sign-up sheet. That’s not how it works.”

“You can laugh,” she said with angry eyes. “You know how I feel when I’m here? Black and desperate. You don’t know what it’s like to be standing in the line to get in to see him.”

“I do,” I said. “I was there yesterday.”

“It’s different for women. They treat you like you’re coming to visit your pimp. Every single one of them smiles with a little smirk like you should know better. Like you’re a delusional victim. If you try to fix yourself up and look respectable, it’s worse in way. They treat you like you’re an idiot because its clear you could do better if you weren’t such a fucking fool.” She popped her fingers to the music like she was trying to snap herself out of the spell of feelings coming over her, but she was buzzed enough that her emotions weren’t hers to control.

Had we been alone, I would have touched her, but under the eyes of the bartender and the three other men present, I didn’t lift my hands. I just said, “Let’s go.”

When we got back to the hotel, it was light out, but the casino parking lot was full. Apparently a ten-car giveaway was scheduled for this evening. When we were safe behind the doors of the elevator, I faced her. She fastened her arms around my torso, reminding me of our childhood when she used to hug the breath out of me. She smelled like vodka but also like lavender and pine trees. I held her until we reached the fifth floor, even as the doors opened revealing a family patiently waiting to get on board.

“Newlyweds,” the mother explained.

We stepped out of the elevator and stood facing the hall leading to our rooms.

“Everyone thought we would get married one day,” she said.

“You’re drunk,” I said. “Way drunk.”

“I disagree.” She made her way to her room and slid the key into the door. Tiny green lights twinkled. “I’m something, but I’m not drunk. Come in? Do you want to?”

“Celestial,” I said, though I felt myself leaning in her direction like someone tipped the world. “It’s me, Dre.” She laughed and it sounded playful like we hadn’t watched Roy’s daddy bury his wife with an old-fashioned spade. She laughed like this was a time before anything bad had ever happened.

“It’s me, too,” she said with a grin. “Celestial.”

I tried to laugh back, but no sound came. Besides, any laugh would be fake, and I never faked anything when it came to her.

It was all over when I stepped over the threshold and heard the door click shut behind me. We didn’t fall into each other’s arms like in a movie, with furious deep kissing and groping. For the first slow moments, we just looked at each other, like what we had chosen was a package that we couldn’t quite figure how to open. She sat on the bed and I did, too, and it reminded me of the other time when we crossed the line, in high school. Then, like now, we were dressed up and frazzled. Back then we had been in the dark basement, yet I could make out the outlines of the ruffles of her party dress. But now we were in the full light. Her hair swelled around her head in a dark halo; both our mouths were hot with alcohol and our clothes stained with graveyard soil.

I moved closer to her and wound my fingers in her thick hair. “We’ve always been together,” she told me. “Not like this. But always.”

I nodded. “I want to be the only one you cook for.”

We laughed, a real laugh, a shared laugh. This is when our life changed. We came to each other with joy on our lips. What came next may not have been legally binding; there was no clergyman or witness. But it was ours.





Roy


In Eloe, if you want to know who you’re supposed to be, you don’t have to go further than the family Bible. Right there, on a blank page, before “In the beginning . . .” is all you need to know. There were other truths in the world, but they weren’t often written down. These unofficial records of kin were passed from lips to ear. Much was made of white relatives, whispered about sometimes in shame, sometimes in satisfaction, depending on the details. Then there was other family on the right side of the color line, but the wrong side of the property line. I was the rare soul in Eloe with no family ties outside of my parents. Olive was born in Oklahoma City and there was family there, but I never met them. Big Roy was from Howland, Texas, and wandered to Eloe on his way to Jackson. Our family Bible they received as a wedding gift from Big Roy’s landlady. When you lift the leather cover, there are only our three names spelled out in Olive’s careful cursive.

Roy McHenry Hamilton + Olive Ann Ingelman

Roy Othaniel Hamilton Jr.

Olive never wrote Celestial’s name beside mine, but there was a lot of room on the page, space to list all the Hamiltons of the future, connected with diagonal lines and dashes.

Davina Hardrick was different. At least a dozen black Hardricks lived in town, even a few Hardriks, without the c, who changed their names when the family split like a feuding congregation. I envied her these robust roots, thick enough to buckle the sidewalk. She said she was living in Miss Annie Mae’s house, and I tried to remember who Miss Annie Mae was to her, what Bible lines connected them. I remembered Davina’s grandfather, Mr. Picard, or maybe he was her uncle? There had been something extended about her family, that much I did remember. Once I had known who all was kin to anybody else.