Corinthians laughed. “I told you Negroes didn’t like water.”
He didn’t mean it. It happened before he was through. She’d stepped away from him to pick flowers, returned, and at the sound of her footsteps behind him, he’d turned around before he was through. It was becoming a habit —this concentration on things behind him. Almost as though there were no future to be had.
But if the future did not arrive, the present did extend itself, and the uncomfortable little boy in the Packard went to school and at twelve met the boy who not only could liberate him, but could take him to the woman who had as much to do with his future as she had his past.
Guitar said he knew her. Had even been inside her house.
“What’s it like in there?” Milkman asked him.
“Shiny,” Guitar answered. “Shiny and brown. With a smell.”
“A bad smell?”
“I don’t know. Her smell. You’ll see.”
All those unbelievable but entirely possible stories about his father’s sister—the woman his father had forbidden him to go near—had both of them spellbound. Neither wished to live one more day without finding out the truth, and they believed they were the legitimate and natural ones to do so. After all, Guitar already knew her, and Milkman was her nephew.
They found her on the front steps sitting wide-legged in a long-sleeved, long-skirted black dress. Her hair was wrapped in black too, and from a distance, all they could really see beneath her face was the bright orange she was peeling. She was all angles, he remembered later, knees, mostly, and elbows. One foot pointed east and one pointed west.
As they came closer and saw the brass box dangling from her ear, Milkman knew that what with the earring, the orange, and the angled black cloth, nothing—not the wisdom of his father nor the caution of the world—could keep him from her.
Guitar, being older and already in high school, had none of the reluctance that his young buddy still struggled with, and was the first one to speak.
“Hi.”
The woman looked up. First at Guitar and then at Milkman.
“What kind of word is that?” Her voice was light but gravel-sprinkled. Milkman kept on staring at her fingers, manipulating the orange. Guitar grinned and shrugged. “It means hello.”
“Then say what you mean.”
“Okay. Hello.”
“That’s better. What you want?”
“Nothin. We just passin by.”
“Look like you standin by.”
“If you don’t want us here, Miss Pilate, we’ll go.” Guitar spoke softly.
“I ain’t the one with the wants. You the one want something.”
“We wanna ask you something.” Guitar stopped feigning indifference. She was too direct, and to keep up with her he had to pay careful attention to his language.
“Ask it.”
“Somebody said you ain’t got no navel.”
“That the question?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t sound like a question. Sound like an answer. Gimme the question.”
“Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Do you have a navel?”
“No.”
“What happened to it?”
“Beats me.” She dropped a bright peeling into her lap and separated an orange section slowly. “Now do I get to ask a question?”
“Sure.”
“Who’s your little friend?”
“This here’s Milkman.”
“Do he talk?” Pilate swallowed a piece of the fruit.
“Yeah. He talk. Say something.” Guitar shoved an elbow at Milkman without taking his eyes off Pilate.
Milkman took a breath, held it, and said, “Hi.”
Pilate laughed. “You all must be the dumbest unhung Negroes on earth. What they telling you in them schools? You say ‘Hi’ to pigs and sheep when you want ’em to move. When you tell a human being ‘Hi,’ he ought to get up
