lawn. In recent years I had taken to gardening. I had daylilies and wild roses against the fence, and strawberries and potatoes in large rectangular plots at the center of the yard. There was a trellis that enclosed my porch, and I always had flowering vines growing there. The year before I had planted wild passion fruit.
But what I loved the most was my avocado tree. It was forty feet high with leaves so thick and dark that it was always cool under its shade. I had a white cast-iron bench set next to the trunk. When things got really hard, I’d sit down there to watch the birds chase insects through the grass.
When I came up to the fence I had almost forgotten the tax man. He didn’t know about me. How could he? He was just grabbing at empty air.
Then I saw the boy.
He was doing a crazy dance in my potato patch. He held both hands in the air, with his head thrown back, and cackled deep down in his throat. Every now and then he’d stamp his feet, like little pistons, and reach both hands down into the soil, coming out with long tan roots that had the nubs of future potatoes dangling from them.
When I pushed open the gate it creaked and he swung around to look at me. His eyes got big and he swiveled his head to one side and the other, looking for an escape route. When he saw that there was no escape he put on a smile and held the potato roots out at me. Then he laughed.
It was a ploy I had used when I was small.
I wanted to be stern with him, but when I opened my mouth I couldn’t keep from smiling.
“What you doin’, boy?”
“Playin’,” he said in a thick Texas drawl.
“That’s my potatas you stampin’ on. Know that?”
“Uh-uh.” He shook his head. He was a small, very dark boy with a big head and tiny ears. I figured him for five years old.
“Whose potatas you think you got in your hands?”
“My momma’s.”
“Yo’ momma?”
“Um-huh. This my momma’s house.”
“Since when?” I asked.
The question was too much for him. He scrunched his eyes and hunched his boy shoulders. “It just is, thas all.”
“How long you been here kickin’ up my garden?” I looked around to see daylilies and rose petals strewn across the yard. There wasn’t a red strawberry in the patch.
“We just come.” He gave me a large grin and reached out to me. I picked him up without thinking about it. “Momma losted her key so I had to go in da windah an’ open up the door.”
“What?”
Before I could put him down I heard a woman humming. The timbre of her voice sent a thrill through me even though I didn’t recognize it yet. Then she came around from the side of the house. A sepia-colored woman-large, but shapely, wearing a plain blue cotton dress and a white apron. She carried a flat-bottomed basket that I recognized from my closet, its braided handle looped into the crook of her right arm. There were kumquats and pomegranates from my fruit trees and strawberries from the yard on a white handkerchief that covered the bottom of the basket. She was a beautiful, full-faced woman with serious eyes and a mouth, I knew, that was always ready to laugh. The biceps of her right arm bulged, because EttaMae Harris was a powerful woman who, in her younger years, had done hand laundry nine hours a day, six days a week. She could knock a man into next Tuesday, or she could hold you so tight that you felt like a child again, in your mother’s loving embrace.
“Etta,” I said, almost to myself.
The boy tittered like a little maniac. He squirmed around in my arms and worked his way down to the ground.
“Easy Rawlins.” Her smile came into me, and I smiled back.
“What… I mean,” I stammered. The boy was running around his mother as fast as he could. “I mean, why are you here?”
“We come t’ see you, Easy. Ain’t that right, LaMarque?”
“Uh-huh,” the boy said. He didn’t even look up from his run.
“Stop that racin’ now.” Etta reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder. She spun him around, and he looked up at me and smiled.
“Hi,” he said.
“We met already.” I motioned my head toward the lawn.
When Etta saw the damage LaMarque had done her eyes got big and my heart beat a litter faster.
“LaMarque!”
The boy lowered his head and shrugged.
“Huh?” he asked.
“What you do to this yard?”
“Nuthin’.”
“Nuthin’?” You call this mess nuthin’?”
She reached out to grab him, but LaMarque let himself fall to the ground, hugging his knees.
“I’s just gard’nin’ in the yard,” he whimpered. “Thas all.”
“Gard’nin’?” Etta’s dark face darkened even more, and the flesh around her eyes creased into a devil’s gaze. I don’t know how LaMarque reacted to that stare, but I was so worried that I couldn’t find my breath.
She balled her fists so that her upper arms got even larger; a tremor went through her neck and shoulders.
But then, suddenly, her eyes softened, she even laughed.
Etta has the kind of laugh that makes other people happy.
“Gard’nin’?” she said again. “Looks like you a reg’lar gard’nin’ tornado.”
I laughed along with her. LaMarque didn’t exactly know why we were so cheery but he grinned too and rolled around on the ground.
“Get up from there now, boy, and go get washed.”
“Yes, Momma.” LaMarque knew how to be a good boy after he had been bad. He ran toward the house, but before he got past Etta she grabbed him by one arm, hefted him into the air, and gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek. He was grinning and wiping the kiss from his face as he turned to run for the door.
Then Etta held her arms out and I walked into her embrace as if I had never heard of her husband, my best friend, Mouse.
I buried my face in her neck and breathed in her natural, flat scent; like the smell of fresh-ground flour. I put my arms around EttaMae Harris and relaxed for the first time since I had last held her-fifteen years before.
“Easy,” she whispered, and I didn’t know if I was holding her too tight or if she was calling my name.
I knew that embrace was the same thing as holding a loaded gun to my head, because Raymond Alexander, known to his friends as Mouse, was a killer. If he saw any man holding his wife like that he wouldn’t even have blinked before killing him. But I couldn’t let her go. The chance to hold her one more time was worth the risk.
“Easy,” she said again, and I realized that I was pressing against her with my hips, making it more than obvious how I felt. I wanted to let go but it was like early morning, when you first wake up and just can’t let go of sleep yet.
“Let’s go inside, honey,” she said, putting her cheek to mine. “He wants his food.”
The smells of Southern cooking filled the house. Etta had made white rice and pinto beans with fatback. She’d picked lemons from the neighbor’s bush for lemonade. There was a mayonnaise jar in the center of the table with pink and red roses in it. That was the first time that there were ever cut flowers in my house.
The house wasn’t very big. The room we were in was a living room and dining room in one. The living-room side was just big enough for a couch, a stuffed chair, and a walnut cabinet with a television in it. From there was a large doorless entryway that led to the dinette. The kitchen was in the back. It was a short alley with a counter and a stove. The bedroom was small too. It was a house big enough for one man; and it held me just fine.
“Get up from there, LaMarque,” Etta said. “The man always sit at the head of the table.”
“But…” LaMarque began to say, and then he thought better of it.
