“This is how they used to do when they cured tobacco,” she said, twisting a tobacco leaf. “She thought it was a nut, so she ate it.”
We only stayed there from that Friday till Monday because Mama couldn’t get longer than that off from work. I’d spent most of my time with Charlotte. She’d kept wanting to go in the woods. She never did talk about the boy again or what he’d done, but she would keep talking about her mother wanting her to marry. I stayed with her because I wanted Mama to get to talk to Miss Billie. When we were coming back on the bus, I couldn’t tell if she had. She had that same look of strain around her eyes that she was beginning to have now. She lay back on the seat and kept her eyes closed most of the time.
“Did you like Charlotte?” she asked once. “Yes.”
“What did you talk about?”
“I don’t know. Just talk. She likes to walk in the woods a lot.”
“She seems more settled down than she used to be,” Mama
said. “I know she gets hell, though.”
I said nothing. I looked over at her, and then leaned back against my seat and closed my eyes.
“I told Mama if she had another child I’d raise it, but I said I wasn’t going to have one myself. That made her real mad,” Charlotte said.
8
“It ain’t Alfonso, it’s Jean,” Otis said. He’d come to see us again, this time it was about eleven o’clock at night and Daddy was home too.
The way he was looking when he first came in, nobody was saying anything, just followed him back to the living room and waited for him to start talking. He threw his arm over the couch again.
“We had to pass this hotel, and then she said—said it real quiet, I almost didn’t hear it, ‘I had to think he was you before I could do anything,’ she said. I just looked at her, you know.
“‘Then why in the hell did you let him fuck you then? I don’t wont nobody fuckin you.’
“‘I didn’t let him fuck me.’
“‘I said I don’t wont nobody fuckin you.’
“‘I didn’t let him fuck me.’
“Then there wasn’t no words, just him hitting her. I guess I was kind of hypnotized, you know. Just standing there. He got in two hits before I took his arm. ‘All right, man, it’s all right now.’ She starts it, Marie. Not him. She starts it and then he finishes it. She’s the one wonts it, though, Marie. I’m living in a crazy house.”
Mama said nothing. Daddy got up and went in the kitchen. I didn’t think he was coming back, but he did. Otis was already talking again when he got back.
“It was like I didn’t wont to cut in, you know. like I wanted to just keep watching. like they were working all that blues out of them, or something. I didn’t even wont to put my hand in, but then I knew I couldn’t just stand by watching like that.”
“Naw,” Mama said finally. Daddy said nothing.
Otis just sat there, and then Daddy told him he had some Old Crow back there in the kitchen, and Otis said he’d better just have a sip and go.
“It’s like they my mission in life, you know what I mean, man?”
Daddy said he knew what he meant.
When I looked at Mama, she said she was going to bed.
She shut the door, and I got the sheet and blanket out of the cedar chest and made up my couch-bed.
“He’s got his hands full,” I heard Daddy tell Mama. “He feels that if he just up and leaves them, whatever happens to them will be his responsibility.”
Mama said nothing.
“That’s a hell of a situation to be in.” Mama said, “Yes.”
I sucked in my stomach.
Alfonso reached over and took my hand. I pulled it away and put it under the table.
“Don’t nobody believe you my cousin now.”
I said nothing. I touched the foam on the top of my beer.
Alfonso frowned. “You wouldn’t do anything for me, would you?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t do that,” I said.
I wanted to tell him it wasn’t me he was worrying about, but I didn’t know what that would make him say.
We sat there, saying nothing.
“You see that woman over there,” he said after a moment. I looked at the woman. “Yes.”
“She’d do anything for me. If I asked for five dollars right now, she’d give it to me. You don’t believe me?”
“I believe you.”
“Yeah, she’d do anything for me. She likes me. She’s been trying to get me ever since I started coming here. You didn’t see the evil eye she give you, did you? naw, but I seen it. Yes-sir, if I went up to her right this minute and asked her for five bucks, she’d give it to me. Give it to me and wouldn’t ask for nothing in return. I wouldn’t do that, though. I wouldn’t go up to her and ask, because I’m not that kind of a man. I mean a man that know a woman wonts him and then take advantage of it. But that’s the way some men do, though.
