Good Negress by Verdelle A. J

Author:Verdelle, A. J.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 1994-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

DAYS OF DISBELIEF

A MAN CAME who worked with Daddy on the trains. He put a big hard hand on my hair, which had been ruffled by all this business; he smoothed it down and told me that my daddy talked all the time about his princess little girl. Mama had us all sitting in the front room. She said for us to listen to what the man from the trains had to say. Luke was curled up under Mama like he was still in the belly. The man from the trains gave Mama some papers and said, “These Are Very Important,” and she should call him if she needed help. He also handed David—for his family, he said—a fat envelope. Inside there was money, curling, having been through many hands. It had been collected, pressed flat, stacked up, and brought to us.

AFTER DADDY WAS finally gone for good, Miss Lena made sure we three got back to school. She started talking to Mama about going back to work. Mama finally did go back to work after the envelope was empty and the papers were turned in. I think Miss Lena had to walk her there like we got walked to school.

Mama finally started to come around and make decisions. She spoke authority again; we kids depended less on what Aunt Lena said do. In the evenings, when Aunt Lena came by, Margarete reported on each of us: Luke edward needs, David needs, Neesey’s school shoes ain’t gone last. She developed new plans about what she would do; each one less grandiose than the one the day before.

Margarete had laid out Daddy’s suits in neat layers on the bed, and she slept on them. Nobody went into their bedroom but her for a while. The memory of the blood dime kept me away. She came into our bedrooms to check us: she rubbed Luke and David on their heads, and told them how sorry she was that they were boys without a daddy. I understood what she was saying, because at least I had her.

MOST OF MY daddy’s good friends were men on the trains. They did different things: cook, clean the cars and the toilets, attend to the people who had money for the sleeping cars, lift luggage, pass out pillows, fetch things for the passengers. My father did these last three things, mostly being in charge of the luggage.

Daddy had said all he and his men friends talked about on the trains was their kids and wives. He said that people who would never see us, probably, knew all about us. Daddy said he had told his friend Warren Blanchard about my skinned elbows from when I tripped on the scooter, and Warren Blanchard made his home in Cleveland!

I had imagined Daddy and his friends plenty of times, lonesome men on the tracked motor cars. I believed that my daddy must never stop feeling the buzz of a moving thing all the time, and I was proud that he never did complain about that.

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