For All Time Page 11

  A hint of a smile plucks at the corners of her lips.

  “The man laughed in my face, laughed so hard I thought he might fall out of his chair. Told me that he didn’t owe us anything and that he’d paid for what Mama was giving him fair and square, and now that she ain’t have nothing he wanted, their business was over.”

  The memory of it makes my temples throb. My fists begin to clench, and I have to loosen my tie so I can get a bit more air.

  “I did not take it well. I said some choice words, took a few swipes at him before his security pulled me off. It was a baseball bat that crushed my knee. He laid down the blows himself. I’ll say this for him: Everybody else who’s taken a hand to Fats has ended up dead. I just ended up in the hospital.”

  I could tell her about the side hustles I ran to keep food on the table while Mama melted away to nothing. How King Fats came lookin’ for me after I started makin’ money with one of his rivals, hell-bent on killing me for leaking trade secrets, but I don’t. I’ve already shared too much. Too much of the pain I’ve sealed away.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “Me too. You’re the only person I’ve ever told what really happened.” I lift my head and we lock eyes.

  I don’t know what it is about this girl, but she makes me feel like I felt when I had a mother, when I had a family and a place that was mine. She feels like home.

  “Thank you for telling me. What do you tell people when they ask about your leg?” she asks.

  “That I broke it jumping out a preacher’s daughter’s window.”

  She rolls her eyes. “You’re too much.”

  “I try to be just enough,” I say, and wink.

  “He’s marrying me off,” Tamar says. Her voice is even, but it knocks me back just the same.

  “What?”

  “Tomorrow. In the morning. We’re not going to Atlanta. Maybe we never were. We’re going to visit one of his fraternity brothers. I will meet a man who will decide if he can tolerate me, and I will be expected to marry him,” she says solemnly.

  “He can’t force you to do that,” I say, angry on her behalf.

  “Can’t he? I have no money. I have no means to take care of myself. If he wants to drop me off at the side of the road, he can.” Tears slide down her cheeks.

  This time I don’t stop myself. I lean in and pull her toward me. I let her sob into my chest and soak my shirt and I squeeze harder. She smells like rosewater and Overton’s face powder, clean and sweet like Easter flowers.

  Tamar pulls away and I get a good look at her. Her lip is swollen, but, thankfully, he didn’t split it.

  I take the cloth with the ice from her hand and dip it into the bucket of cold water. I wipe the tracks of tears from her cheeks. She’s so beautiful it hurts.

  “You’re staring again,” she whispers.

  “I just can’t get over how lovely you are. I know you don’t like me to say that, but it’s true.” She drops her gaze, bashful for just a moment. I’m a little embarrassed, too. I don’t think I’ve ever called anyone lovely. “I could kill your daddy for what he’s done, and since you’re a modern woman, you can help me.”

  At that, she chuckles. “I don’t want to kill Daddy.”

  “So, what would you like to do?” I ask.

  “This.”

  As her soft lips meet mine, the first thing that crosses my mind is that up until this moment, I don’t think I’ve ever been kissed before.

  22 TAMAR

  MY LIP BURNS FROM THE pressure of kissing him. I’ve never kissed a boy. Ever. I’ve kissed girls, sure, little nips on the rooftop of the finishing school. Sleepovers. This is different. He’s like steel that only heats more with each kiss, but all I want is more. I want to be burned, seared by him. By this moment. He tastes like coffee and traces of lemon. I hold his face to mine, but it’s not close enough. I want him on me, around me, tracing every inch of my skin.

  I kneel in front of him, and when that isn’t enough, I move closer, hooking my leg over his hips. He moves his kisses to my jaw, my neck, and I forget how to breathe. He grips my ankle to pull me even closer. His fingertips are rough and sure, calloused like mine. Does he play music as well?

  Thunder rolls under my skin and he strikes lightning down my collarbone to the top of my dress. He nudges the light cotton of my collar to the side with his nose. I kiss his face, his ear, his neck. I lick the skin there and he tastes just like unripe watermelon, just ready enough to shake a bit of salt on to bring out the sweet. And—

  An image flashes across my mind, and my heart squeezes and flutters. I’ve been here before. Together, with him, like this. The rhythm of the train rocks us in its arms and—

  I know him.

  I see Fayard. I see us, just behind my eyes, in a memory I can’t place. Our fingers are entwined under a tree at the edge of a farm. I feed him strawberries. The juice stains his lips, my fingers. He’s laughing at something I’ve said. We’re both dressed a bit funny. Him in a loose-fitting white shirt made out of coarse fabric and loose homespun pants. His hair is longer, but his smile is still the same. My hair is tied up in a scarf and tucked under a straw hat.

  Flash.

  He kisses me as tears slide down my face. Why am I crying? We’re tumbling through tall grass at the edge of a lake. His face is scarred with ritual markings on each of his cheeks. He looks at me as if I’m food. He always looks at me like this, but it doesn’t scare me. I’m the opposite of scared. He strokes my face and tackles me so that we’re a ball of laughter tangled in soft, sandy ground. He traces kisses down my belly.

  Flash.

  I remember. And remember. And remember.

  He’s in short pants on a beach, wrapped in a white robe at the edge of a desert, bent over double planting rice.

  My father is asleep nearby. I place my hand against his chest, and his eyes, they plead, full of hunger—they look just like they did at the edge of the lake, and now I am afraid.

  Flash.

  “I’m—I’m sorry,” Fayard pants. His chest is heaving and sweat gathers on his brow. His whole face is glowing, just like it did when he had that fishing accident. His father, Ade? Adesola! Adesola had sent him out early and he’d caught his leg in a net and… that didn’t happen.

  I shake my head and close my eyes to shut out his too-familiar face as I come crashing back to the here and now.

  “You don’t have to be sorry. I’m the one who kissed you,” I say.

  “Oh, yes, you did. Uh… did you… while we were…”

  I cover my hand with his. Whatever he’s about to ask, I don’t want to answer. I need to catch my breath. I need my mind to slow down. I hinge back a bit to rest my head on the frame behind me and I see his face twitch.

  “I’m sorry, let me get off,” I say.

  His hands grip gently but firmly on my hips and hold me in place.

  “Please. Stay. Having you sit here is the best my leg has felt in a year.”

  “How bad is it?” I ask, because I care, but also to get him to talk.

  I need him to tell me about the real him, the train porter Fayard. He looks at me, a bit surprised, but with that same intensity, like he’s peeling away the layers of my mind to get to what’s underneath. He says it’s worse in the morning and tells me about his stay in the hospital. I watch his mouth move and try to keep from looking him directly in the eye. It doesn’t stop my brain from conjuring up images of him somewhere else, sometime else. He continues and I remember listening just like this, knotted in a pretzel of limbs on dirt, on sand, in a bed of hay, a bed of silk.

  I tell him to stop and climb off. I push myself against the wall and I see a rope of hammered gold around his neck and a braided white cloth wrapped around his head.

  “Are you okay?”

  I don’t hear him at first, but I can tell from the way his brow knits that he’s concerned. He says it again and again until he pushes himself up from the floor on his one good leg and leaves, returning with a glass of
water. I drink all of it.

  “I must be tired,” I say when I’m done, and I almost believe it. I could run a mile with as much nervous energy as I have built up in my body, but my mind—my mind must be weary. “It’s the excitement of the day, I think.”

  “Or the worries of tomorrow,” he replies.

  The concern has deepened his voice. I can’t look up at him.

  “Do you really think he’s gonna marry you off? You came all this way. It ain’t that much farther to Atlanta.”

  “Daddy doesn’t make threats, and he never changes his mind. He prides himself on that. Once he makes a decision, that’s it.”

  “Wasn’t it his idea to bring you to Atlanta?” he asks.

  I reach back in my memory to pick apart all the words he used regarding the trip, me, Mama, and Spelman. Not once did he ever say the words “I’m taking you to college.” It was me who reminded him of the start date. I sent off the letters of confirmation. I even arranged the travel. He just nodded his head whenever I told him what I’d done.

  “I don’t know. Mama said she told him what she wanted for me, but I wasn’t there. I didn’t see him promise her, and he never promised me, not to my face. I… I’m in real trouble,” I say, fighting the urge to cry again.

  The panic rises in my chest, and Fayard bridges the distance between us. He places his hand on my back, drawing small circles up and down my spine until my breathing evens out.

  “I can help you,” Fayard says.

  “No one can help me.”

  “I can. I’ve got money.”

  I chance a glance up at him, grateful it’s just him there and not some other version of him, slightly changed and bewildering.

  “I hustle. I told you that. I just needed to get out of Philly, and this was the easiest way. I haven’t really thought about what would come next, but maybe, maybe you’re what’s next,” he says in earnest.

  “But you don’t know me.” No one has ever been this generous to me before. We just met. And while my mind is telling me that I know him deeply and completely, it doesn’t feel right.

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t feel what I felt when you kissed me. Like we fit together somehow, like I’ve known you all my life. I felt it the moment I first saw you on the platform.”

  I tear my eyes away from his and drop my arms from around his waist. When did I put them there?

  I shake my head and straighten my dress. Suddenly I’m desperate for a mirror. “You’re mistaken. Maybe you’re not as experienced as you think you are. Kisses are always like that.” I’m rambling.

  He hooks a finger under my chin and lifts my face so that I have to look at him again.

  “No, Tamar, they are not.”

  I don’t think either of us registered that anyone was approaching until they were there. Two warriors waging battles of their own—Daddy and Mr. Max, quiet and accusing in the doorway.

  And whatever fairy tale I might have thought I’d fallen into is over.

  23 TAMAR

  FAYARD’S MONEY WEIGHS DOWN MY trunk like a dead body. I imagine police at every turn just waiting to search my luggage and unveil my deception. Desperation, that’s what I’m blaming this on. Daddy and his lies made me do it. I tell myself that, but is it true? Did Daddy turn me into this, or is this what I’ve always been?

  “Smile, for God’s sake. Nobody likes a sullen woman. Just a small detour and…” Daddy stops himself. The lie isn’t worth the effort. We both know what this is. I’ve already created the most believable excuse for the eggplant-colored bruise along my jawline. An accident. I was playing stickball with a few kids at the orphanage where I volunteer on the days I’m not providing cello lessons to the children of the Philadelphia colored elite.

  “It doesn’t even hurt,” I tell the driver as he loads our bags into the car. Mr. John squints hard, eyes flickering to Daddy, before he decides to go on with his polite introduction to his hometown.

  The train station gets smaller in the rearview mirror, but I can still see Fayard’s face when I close my eyes.

  “James Shepard is a great man. After he and Mr. Fitzgerald started that Mechanics and Farmers Bank—we call it the M&F Bank—colored folks in town really had something to call they own. I was right grateful for them, too. My brother’s got a farm ’bout twenty miles outside of Durham. If it hadn’t been for Mr. Shepard’s bank, we wouldn’t have got the mule we needed to keep the family name right. My family ain’t too big, you know. I can’t work like my brother on account of my arm.…”

  He yawns on, but it’s all just a blur. A lot about the great Mr. Shepard and how smart his nephew is, as if I care. My mind is racing, trying to figure my way out of this. I thought we’d be close to the train station, or at the very least someplace close to the city, but the hours stretch on as we get closer and closer to Hayti, “the best colored town this side of creation,” to hear Mr. John tell it. All I know is that it’s near part of Durham, far away from the train I need to get back to, to escape, to start fresh, to apologize. Maybe not to apologize just yet. Apologies hit better when you can make up for what you’ve done. Replace what you’ve stolen. Mend what you broke, and I need this money for tuition, for my ticket to Atlanta, to get a small start. I’m in no position to say sorry, not yet.

  “Well! Here we are. Durham, North Carolina, but some folks call it Bull City. Down that way is the Bottoms. I wouldn’t recommend fine folks like yourself going down there. Folks with names stay up on Parrish Street near St. Joseph’s AME Church. Over there is Bankers Fire Insurance Company, and in that building you got the National Negro Finance Corporation. We got our own banks and volunteer firemen, so we ain’t got to worry about what happened in Tulsa in ’21 happening to us.”

  I hold my breath and wait for Daddy to start in on what really caused those white folks in Tulsa to burn out and murder thirty-five full blocks of Negro businessmen, doctors, and schoolteachers a few years ago. Ten thousand people were left homeless, just like that. Everything they worked for, up in smoke, all ’cause some shoeshine boy had the audacity to trip and fall on a white girl in the elevator. Black folks say it was an accident. White folks say it was attempted rape. “What kind of girl works an elevator?” he’d start. It was all Daddy could talk about a few years ago, but he doesn’t take the bait. He lets Mr. John just prattle on. Finally, the car stops.

  The house is large, much larger than our brownstone, with a wraparound porch and rosebushes bursting with flowers lining the walkway. African violets spill out of flower boxes on the second- floor windows, flanked by bright white shutters covered in the kind of ivy that’s left to wander as it destroys. A man—short, barrel-chested, and bespectacled—stands regally at the top step, clothed in the kind of righteousness that old families tailor for all their sons. It makes his creases sharper and the pigments in his ties brighter. It reminds everyone that humility is for the middle class.

  Father bounds up the steps, nearly falling over himself to greet the patriarch of the Milton homestead, admiration smoothing the folds between his eyes. He can smell their money, and even I can’t miss the perfume of their position in the community. It’s the aroma you get after you’ve had generations removed from struggle, while Daddy’s still got the stench of Tennessee moonshine on him.

  I smile and nod like a good girl all day and well into dinner with the entire Milton family, where Mrs. Edith Barbara Milton—and one must use all her names when addressing her—is attended by the housemaid. The girl is nameless, with downcast eyes and a blinding white apron that I marvel at as I watch Mrs. Edith Barbara Milton’s trembling hands and insistence on feeding herself. The cold soup is a disaster in slow motion. I’d no idea soup could be served cold until now.

  Once she’s had her fill, her voice rings out, high and sharp as she addresses me. “Spelman? Fine school for girls, but it really is unseemly for a young woman to be separated from her family by so many miles. My son-in-law founded the North Carolina College for Negroes. It’s just become four-year.
It’s important that we develop Negro teachers to educate the race into the future,” Mrs. Edith Barbara Milton says.

  I want to reply that I’ve never seen myself as a teacher, but more as a performer. I want to ask if there is a music concentration, but I bite back the question because I don’t want to know. I don’t need to know how I can force-feed myself this half life. No, it’s better to go on as if this is a hell of my father’s design that I must escape. I need a good reason for what I’ve done, some excuse for what I’ve allowed myself to be. I let my selfishness turn to salt in my mouth, and I’m suddenly not hungry, my belly full of guilt and my own sharp-edged desires.

  They’ve seated me across from Norman Shepard, the nephew, my father’s future for me. He’s got the flat forehead and light eyes of his uncle James, glasses, and an air of haughty satisfaction with the world and his place in it. Unfortunately, he’s also got his grandmother’s weaselly voice.

  “We all agree. The question is to what extent. We should ask ourselves what we must sacrifice in our zeal to move forward at all costs. Our women are sent to work as teachers and secretaries and nurses while the work they are divinely ordained to do, as wives and mothers, is neglected. Can the race be uplifted if the family falls apart?” Norman says.

  * * *

  “You don’t talk very much, do you?” Norman says when the meal is over and we all thankfully begin retiring to our separate rooms. He’s been ignoring my usually very effective nonverbal cues. “You should speak up more around here. Your father led us to believe you were at least agreeable to conversation, if not a wit.”