rest.”
“They give me pills that put me about halfway ’sleep. Then I start thinkin’ about Nola and I wake up. But Tina comes in and talks to me.”
“Everything’s going to be all right, Miss Landry,” the nurse said.
She was filled with the beauty of youth. Her light brown skin and luscious hair, her child’s hands and woman’s figure. Her lips were in the shape of a chubby heart and her eyes were always looking somewhere else to keep you from seeing the hunger they held. And even though everything about her was geared to making babies and a home she sat there night after night with Geneva Landry, listening to her grief and loss.
“You’re a godsend,” Geneva said and her eyes fluttered, filling with tears.
“In a day or two it will all be settled,” I said. “And I’ll make sure that Nola gets a nice service.”
“You will?” she asked.
“Yes ma’am.”
“Mr. Rawlins?” Tina Monroe asked.
“Yes?”
“Are you going to stay here for a while?”
“Until mornin’ I guess.”
Tina stood up. “I have to make my rounds and I won’t feel so bad doing it if you stay here with Miss Landry.”
“No problem.”
I watched the young black woman in white move through the doorway.
“She’s beautiful,” Geneva Landry said.
“She sure is,” I added. And I meant it even though it wasn’t really true. Tina was handsome, she was well built, but not beautiful.
“It’s nice that she can come and sit with you,” I added.
“Oh yes. You know I think I might go crazy in here if it wasn’t for her. I start thinkin’ about Nola and my mind feels like there’s razor blades in it.”
“Don’t think about it,” I said. “Let it go.”
Geneva had lost weight in the few hours since I had seen her. Her face was drawn and her eyes drifted in her head even when she was talking to me.
“I cain’t help it, Mr. Rawlins. I should have told Nola to get away from that white man. I know what men like that can do to a woman or a girl.”
“Men like what?” I asked.
“White,” she said as if I were a fool. “White men. They rotten. I mean they smile and say nice things in company but when they get you alone it’s another story . . . another story altogether.”
She started to cry and I took her hands in mine.
“You don’t want to cry, Miss Landry,” I said. “Nola’s in heaven, you know. She’s in a better place. And the man who harmed her will pay the price. I promise you that.”
“Will he lose an eye like the one he took from my beautiful Scarlet?”
“More,” I said. “More.”
The promise of retribution seemed to calm Geneva. She kissed my forearm and then laid a cheek against it. I pulled one hand free and stroked her cheek. She sighed and shuddered and then drifted off into a deep sleep.
I sat there for over an hour stroking her face now and then. Whenever I touched her she started and then smiled.
Light filled the small window near her bed. The birds began their morning songs and Tina returned. When she saw me sitting so close to the sleeping woman she smiled.
“She’s a darling,” Tina said.
She leaned over the bed and kissed the older woman’s brow. At the time I thought that was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. The feeling Tina had for her charge made my heart run hot.
When we went out into the hall she told me, “My shift’s over in fifteen minutes.”
I looked at my watch. It was five forty-five.
“Can we go get some coffee after?”
“Okay.”
19
Nip’s Coffee Shop on Olympic opened at six. We got there fifteen minutes later but there were already a dozen or more customers eating scrambled eggs and doughnuts, drinking reconstituted orange juice and coffee that tasted mostly like the urn it came from.
We sat in a window booth across from each other.
Tina didn’t have a beautiful face. It would have been plain if it weren’t for that inner light young people have.
