Song of Solomon

“Down the hall,” he said. Then, apologetically, “Can I get you something?”

“Oh.” She pushed a few strands of matted damp hair from her forehead. “Something to drink, please. Something cold.”

He dressed quickly, leaving off his shirt and his socks, and left the room. Corinthians got up too and began to put her clothes on. Since there seemed to be no mirror in the room, she stood in front of the open window and used the upper part of the pane, dark enough to show her reflection, to smooth her hair. Then she noticed the walls. What she had assumed to be wallpaper as she entered and fell on the bed was in fact calendars. Row after row of calendars: S. &. J. Automobile Parts, featuring a 1939 Hudson; the Cuyahoga River Construction Company (“We build to please—We’re pleased to build”); Lucky Hart Beauty Products (a wavy-haired lady smiling out of a heavily powdered face); the Call and Post newspaper. But most of them were from the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. They literally covered the walls, each one turned to December. It was as though he’d kept every calendar since 1939. Some of them were large cards displaying all twelve months and on those she noticed circles drawn around dates.

Porter came in while she was gazing at them. He held a glass of iced water, the cubes jammed to the rim.

“Why do you keep calendars?” she asked.

He smiled. “Passes the time. Here. Drink your drink. It’ll cool you.”

She took the glass and sipped a little from it, trying to keep the ice from touching her teeth as she looked at him over the rim. Standing there, barefoot, her hair damp with sweat and sticking to her cheeks like paint, she felt easy. In place of vanity she now felt a self-esteem that was quite new. She was grateful to him, this man who rented a tiny room from her father, who ate with a knife and did not even own a pair of dress shoes. A perfect example of the men her parents had kept her from (and whom she had also kept herself from) all her life because such a man was known to beat his woman, betray her, shame her, and leave her. Corinthians moved close to him, tilted his chin up with her fingers, and planted a feathery kiss on his throat. He held her head in his hands until she closed her eyes and tried to set the glass down on a tiny table.

“Uh uh. It’ll be light soon. Gotta get you home.”

She obeyed and finished dressing herself. They walked as softly as possible down the stairs and past the wide triangle of light that lay on the floor in front of the kitchen door. The men were still at their card game, but the door was partially open now. Porter and Corinthians moved quickly past, just out of the light.

Still a voice called, “Who that? Mary?”

“No. Just me. Porter.”

“Porter?” The voice was incredulous. “What shift you on?”

“Catch you later,” said Porter and opened the front door before the speaker’s curiosity could propel him into the hall.

Corinthians slid as close to Porter as the floor gear of the car allowed, her head resting on the seat back. She closed her eyes once more and took deep breaths of the sweet air her brother had been inhaling three hours ago.

“Hadn’t you better fix your hair?” Porter asked. He thought she was beautiful like that, girlish, but he didn’t want her excuse to her parents, if they were still awake, to sound ridiculous.

She shook her head. She wouldn’t have collected her hair into a ball at her nape now for anything in the world.

Porter parked under the same tree where Corinthians had thrown herself across the hood of the car. Now, after a whispered confession, she walked the four blocks, no longer afraid to mount the porch steps.

As soon as she closed the door she heard voices and instinctively touched her loose hair. The voices came from beyond the dining room, from behind the closed kitchen door. Men’s voices. Corinthians blinked. She had just come from a house in which men sat in a lit kitchen talking in loud excited voices, only to meet an identical scene at home. She wondered if this part of the night, a part she was unfamiliar with, belonged, had always belonged, to men. If perhaps it was a secret hour in which men rose like giants from dragon’s teeth and, while the women slept, clustered in their kitchens. On tiptoe she approached the door. Her father was speaking.

“You still haven’t explained to me why you brought him along.”

“What difference does it make now?” That was her brother’s voice.

“He knows about it,” said her father. “That’s what difference.”

“About what? There’s nothing to know. It was a bust.” Milkman’s voice swelled like a blister.

“It was a mistake, not a bust. It just means it’s somewhere else. That’s all.”

“Yeah. The mint. You want me to go to the mint?”

“No!” Macon struck the table. “It’s got to be there. It’s got to.”

Corinthians couldn’t make sense out of what they were talking about with so much passion, and she didn’t want to stay there and learn, lest it distract her from the contentment she was feeling. She left them and climbed the stairs to her own bed.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Milkman folded his arms on the table and put his head down. “I don’t care. I don’t care where it is.”

“It was just a mistake,” said his father. “One little mess-up. That don’t mean we have to pull out.”

“You call being thrown in jail a little mess-up?”

“You out, ain’t you? You was only there twenty minutes.”

“Two hours.”

“Wouldn’t have been two minutes if you had called me soon’s you got there. Sooner. Should have called me soon’s they picked you up.”

“Police cars don’t have telephones in them.” Milkman was weary. He lifted his head and let it rest in his hand,