Till You Hear From Me: A Novel by Pearl Cleage

Author:Pearl Cleage [Cleage, Pearl]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Contemporary Women, Sagas, African American
ISBN: 0345506375
Google: dfTxm-yeCS0C
Amazon: B0036S4D1A
Publisher: One World/Ballantine
Published: 2010-04-20T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-THREE

A Morning in Hell

THEY ATE EVERY PIECE OF CATFISH, DEVOURED EVERY EAR OF CORN, AND waved off Mr. Eddie’s apologies for the store-bought tomatoes that couldn’t match his own homegrown. They lingered for a few more minutes, enjoying coffee and Miss Iona’s pound cake. Over the course of the meal, Ida B and Wes had successfully established an easy familiarity that acknowledged their past interaction, but didn’t hold it against each other.

Wes felt like he knew a lot of women like Ida. Smart, attractive, sexually active, and unattached. She said she was “between jobs,” which usually meant frantically looking for one, but he assumed she was just being evasive. She answered his questions about her campaign involvement pleasantly enough, but when he confessed that he had decided to sit it out, for business reasons, she just smiled and changed the subject. It was the same look he had gotten from his friends who had seen action in Iraq or Afghanistan whenever he ventured an opinion about the war. It was the way you would look at a five-year-old trying to talk about the stock market. No chance of understanding, so why bother to engage?

That was, of course, exactly how he wanted her to think of him. As an ambitious young businessman, prepared to sit out the election of a lifetime in order to avoid offending his clients, but not above taking advantage of the new racial space that was Obamamerica. Her question about the owner of the plane was to be expected. It had just caught him off guard because he had been so focused on the Rev. His initial feeling had been right on target. The Rev was still feeling the blowback from the whole Wright episode and his exclusion from the new president’s national orbit was as painful as it had been when he realized he had not been invited to the inauguration.

“Can you believe that?” he had asked at dinner. “I still can’t believe it. Who the hell do these Negroes think they are?”

Wes noticed that when the Rev started slamming the president, Ida B kept her eyes on her plate or on her cup; anywhere but her father’s face.

“The thing he’s got to understand,” the Rev was saying, “is that this can’t be about a cult of personality. It has to be bigger than loving Obama. We can’t keep building our movements around one man.”

Mr. Eddie shook his head. “You can say that if you wanna, Rev, but most people figure if they get the right man, he’ll bring the right idea.”

“So that means we’ve got to find somebody new for them to love every time there’s an election?” the Rev said. “What if there’s nobody lovable willing to run? Then what?”

“Then you get John McCain,” Wes said. Ida B rewarded him with a grin.

“Half the people we registered went to the polls thinking they were voting for an Obama/Dunbar ticket,” Mr. Eddie said.

“That would have been Dunbar/Obama.” The Rev laughed. “And don’t forget it!”

Ida B laughed, too.

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