CHAPTER FOUR
James Washington Wallace rolled out of bed, uncoiling like a rusty spring.
His six-foot-three-inch body had fought another losing round with the five-foot-eight-inch mattress. High sunlight burned through the curtains. He dressed and went to check on his aunt. She was watching television.
On the screen, Oprah Winfrey was chatting with Richard Simmons. Richard actually had on a suit and tie instead of his pastel tank top and peppermint shorts, and the audience was uncomfortably quiet. They didn't know what to make of his new, dry-cleaned image. They preferred the sweaty, chipper aerobics machine they had come to know and love.
'How are you feeling today, Aunt Mayzie?' James asked, rubbing the back of his neck.
'I'm fine, honey.” Her voice was rich and ancient, the kind that smoothed troubled waters. 'Ain’t so weak today, and I had a bowl of oatmeal and a banana.'
'Why didn't you let me get breakfast for you?'
'‘Cause I didn't want to wait ‘til I was nothing but skin and bones. I believe you could sleep right through Joshua blowing his trumpet.'
James looked sheepishly at Aunt Mayzie. Her right leg, or rather the scarred stump of it below her knee, was propped on a vinyl settee. A crutch leaned against the table beside her recliner, and her empty bowl sat on the sofa, flakes of oatmeal congealing around its rim. She held a coffee mug in her creased hands.
'You didn't put sugar in that, did you?' James asked.
'No, Mister Boss Man. Between you and that Dr. Wheatley, I'm guaranteed not to have another ounce of joy in this world.'
'But I'll bet it's not decaf.'
'Now, the caffeine gets the old heart ticking of a morning. Ain't no harm in it. Plus, if it kills me, it'll kill me off slow, and something else is bound to get me before then.'
In James's opinion, the most dangerous harm was the slow, silent kind. Like the poison of racism. It wasn't the gap-toothed redneck poking his shotgun out the window of his Chevy pickup, it was the white-collar white saying Sorry, but your-er-qualifications don't suit our needs at this time.
From a historian’s position at the Smithsonian Institute to a dishwashing gig at Buddy’s Grill, James knew all about how life could change. He was the only one in the family able to come live with Aunt Matzie, even if it meant putting his own life on hold.
James ran his dark hand over the peeling paint of the doorjamb. He wondered if this would be a good time to suggest that Aunt Mayzie consider moving into a good northern assisted-care home, one of those clean places with a satellite dish and a sauna and a fitness gym. Northerners weren't totally open-minded, but at least they'd freed their niggers once upon a time without having a gun held to their heads. But she'd never leave here, and he knew why, from the stories Momma had told him.
Mayzie and her husband moved to Windshake forty years ago, fresh from between the honeymoon sheets, to take jobs at the new sock factory. Had settled in this house, filled it with love and a baby and linen curtains. But the baby had died of what they now called Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, only back then they called it “baby just up and died.” Uncle Theodore had followed their baby to heaven three years later in a factory accident, when the cotton press had grabbed his sleeve and pulled him into its iron jaws.
Mayzie had gotten some money from the factory, enough to pay off the house. Black lives were cheap, especially back then, but housing was cheap in those days as well. So Aunt Mayzie had kept working at the factory and tending her marigold beds and became a local fixture as the 'town nigger.' The Civil Rights turmoil bypassed Windshake, as had most everything else. Then her diabetes had taken a turn for the worse and she had retired to her little house with her television set, tabby cat, and the ghost of her right foot.
Now she was a part of the house. She was the house. The framing studs were her bones, the rafters her ribs, the slate siding tiles her skin. Her nerves were lined on the shelf, in a collection of animal salt shakers and miniature teapots. Her lungs were the screen doors, opened during the summer to let in the mountain breeze. Her eyes were the windows, watching as the forsythia bloomed and bluejays scrapped and dandelions filled the cracks in the sidewalk and Old Man Thompson doddered by to deliver her mail. And her heart was the photograph on the mantel, a cracked black-and-white portrait of a smiling young Theo holding a round-cheeked infant.
'Looks like the rain has done passed on,' Aunt Mayzie said, looking out the window over her corner of Windshake. 'And look yonder, the crocuses are starting to poke up.”
'Maybe spring's finally getting here. It sure took its own sweet time. Hard to believe this is the South. I thought it was supposed to be scorching down here.'
'The mountains is a land unto itself. And the bad makes you appreciate the good. It's going to be the kind of day makes you forget all that snow.”
'Yes, ma’am.' James watched the wind press against the stubby balsam shrubs that lined the walkway. 'Maybe we can go for a walk after I get off work.'
'Walk, nothing. I got an appointment with Dr. Wheatley today. I ain't got to walk nowhere when I got to walk somewhere.'
'You didn't tell me.'
'I most certainly did. Last night. But you had your eyes glued on that basketball game like they was giving away money.”
'Georgetown was playing, Aunt Mayzie. I've got to keep up with my old school. What's this appointment for? Something wrong?'
'Just a checkup, is all. Anyways, my appointment's at three o’clock and I know you can't get off work. And I don't even want you to ask. I done fine for myself for thirty years, and I hope to do for at least a few more, the Good Lord willing.'
Yes, but for most of those years, you had two good feet and one strong heart. And you can't use my Honda because you never learned how to drive. Always a walker, you were. A mile to the factory, half mile to the Save-a- Ton, two miles to church. Three miles to catch the Greyhound for the annual family visit. Miles and miles put on those wide black feet, their experience now halved.
'Let me set you up with a cab, then.' James put his hands on his hips. He felt ridiculous trying to stare down the woman who could stare down his own mother.
'Ain't setting foot in a car with that fool Maynard. Keeps a bottle under the seat and a cinder block on the gas pedal. No, I reckon a little stretch ain't gonna do me no harm.'
James pictured Aunt Mayzie crutching down the sidewalk, wearing the purple velour coat James had gotten her for Christmas, a diaphanous red scarf knotted under her chin. Nodding to the white folks, stopping once in a while to rest her armpits, wearing the submissive smile that had hardened on her face like lava turned to obsidian.
'It's only a few blocks, James. Now you go on and don't worry about me. You're going to be late for work.'
James glanced at his Timex. He'd have to run, and he hated to sweat. The steam from the Tin Man was bad enough. He had to be cool. Not like one of those shuffling gangsta stereotypes that populated the rap videos. No, cool like Frederick Douglass and George Washington Carver and Colin Powell.
'You sure you'll be okay?' James asked, his dark brow crinkling.
'I ain't helpless yet, James, even if you seem in an awful hurry to get me that way.'
She turned her attention back to Oprah. James looked at the television. Now there was an African-American who knew how to rake in the bucks. Oprah's stardom had jumped the bounds of racism, even though she had awful taste in literature. Like Bill Cosby and Michael Jordan, she'd never be thought of as a nigger.
All you had to do was get rich and famous, and you were accepted. Well, at minimum wage plus a quarter, he'd be accepted in seven centuries or so.
He bent down and kissed Aunt Mayzie's cheek. 'Call if you need anything, you hear?'
'Old Buddy'd love that, wouldn't he? ‘Don't pay you to talk, boy,’' she growled, trying to imitate the cook. Her laughter rattled the faded wallpaper.
James smiled despite himself. He was a chronic worrier with a streak of paranoia, that was all. The sun was out and the birds were mating and springtime was almost here and Aunt Mayzie was far from defeated. And
