“He said I was the youngest person in five counties to ever be saved, to ever find the Lord,” she was saying. “Reverend Dickinson told me that, told everybody in the tent. And I’ve walked in the light of the Lord ever since….”
“Why don’t yall have some more a this cake?” Carmena said. “Or take it with you. I’ll never eat it all.” She provided aluminum foil and each woman put two slices in the foil and prepared to leave. At the door, as they said their good nights, Carmena asked Beatrice to tell that joke she had heard her tell once, the one about the dark night. Before Beatrice had said a word, Mrs. Garrett made her way through the group and went to her apartment. After they heard Mrs. Garrett lock her door, Carmena asked again to tell about the dark night.
“Well, my daddy,” Beatrice said, “my daddy and my uncle Joe would fun around a lot, mostly for us kids, like two fellas on a radio show. Every now and then my daddy would say, ‘Joe, what’s the darkest night you ever knowed? Tell me, Joe.’ My uncle Joe would play with his chin for a bit, like he was thinkin. ‘Les see,’ he’d say. ‘Les see…oh, yes. Oh, yes. I member this one night I was sittin at home all by my lonesome, nobody for company but the four walls and the memory of company. It commenced to rain and rain, and I heard this knockin at my door. So I get up and opened the door. Well, sir, who was it but these raindrops — a whole passel of raindrops — lookin down at me, lookin scared and cold. And the one in front says to me in this real squeaky voice, ‘Mista, it’s so dark out here, so very dark. Would you please mind tellin us which way it is to the ground?…And that,’ my uncle would say, ‘is the darkest night I ever knowed.’ And we all bust out laughin, specially the little kids, who thought it was the funniest thing in the world to have talkin raindrops.”
The women laughed, too. Then they all hugged good night, each saying that they would not be long out of bed.
About four that morning the thunder and lightning began again. At the first blast of thunder, a sleeping Mrs. Garrett sprang up in her bed, like a puppet jerked suddenly to life by its master, her head turning first this way and then the other. Her heart, usually so docile, began to throw itself about its cage. “Oh, dear Jesus,” she whispered. She flung back the covers with her good arm and swung her legs out of the bed, and in reaching for her glasses, she tipped over the plastic cup that contained her teeth. She did not bother to pick them up, but threw on her robe and took up her cane. The lightning lit her way to the door. Taking her key from a small table, she went out the door, and the wind closed it behind her with such viciousness that she nearly fell to the hall floor.
As she moved down the hall, an enclosed area with no windows, she could hear the clamor of thunder and the whistling of wind coming from under the doors of the apartments. With their half-globe coverings, the ceiling lights provided a long line of moons all the way down the hall. She knocked lightly at Beatrice’s door, and when Mrs. Garrett heard a thunder boom come from under the door of the next apartment, she knocked with greater insistence.
“Who is it?” Beatrice asked.
“It’s me.”
There was a long, long pause, then Beatrice asked again, “Who is it?”
“It’s me. Me!”
There was a pause again, but Beatrice unlocked the door and took off the chain and cracked the door. Mrs. Garrett avoided Beatrice’s eyes and stared into the heart of the flame of the candle Beatrice was holding.
“Bea, it’s me,” Mrs. Garrett said.
“Why you all the time knockin at my door, woman?” Beatrice said. “We ain’t no friends no more, or did you forget that?” The candle’s flame swayed with each word she spoke.
“Please, Bea. You know how it can be. Please don’t leave me out here. Have some pity.”
With two thunderclaps, Beatrice opened the door. “You lucky,” she said, shutting and locking her door. “I was just about ready to go in that bathroom, and you know when I go in there I don’t come out for a soul.” Her hair was in plaits and she wore a nightgown that swept the floor as she moved.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Garrett mumbled, still looking only into the flame. “Thank you so much.”
Beatrice did not help Mrs. Garrett with her chair, and in the end, Mrs. Garrett had to drop her cane and drag the chair into the bathroom with her good arm. The cane hit the floor with a clatter.
“There are people sleepin!” Beatrice said from inside the bathroom.
When Mrs. Garrett had made her way with the chair into the bathroom, Beatrice closed the door, and as soon as she did there was the ripping sound of thunder that bounded across the outside room and found its way under the door of the windowless bathroom.
Beatrice set the candle in the sink, then she spread a blanket across the door’s threshold, Mrs. Garrett put her chair beside the hamper made into the wall. With a sigh Beatrice put down the toilet cover and sat down.
“How long you think it might last, Bea. How long?”
“Why you always ask me such stupid goddamn questions!”
The blanket did nothing to moderate the violence of the thunder, and it continued to sound as if it were outside the door. “Ain’t you gonna blow out the candle?” Mrs. Garrett said. Beatrice leaned over and blew lightly, and in the quickest of moments, the room was engulfed in darkness. Mrs. Garrett began to pray, a long, monotonous mumble of words. Once or twice a boom would produce a small yelp of surprise from each woman, but they did not comfort one another. Over time, the intensity of the thunder grew until it was like a pounding at the bathroom door. And each time it pounded, the women would look toward the door as if they were making up their minds whether to get up and answer it.
MARIE
Every now and again, as if on a whim, the federal government people would write to Marie Delaveaux Wilson in one of those white, stampless envelopes and tell her to come in to their place so they could take another look at her. They, the Social Security people, wrote to her in a foreign language that she had learned to translate over the years, and for all the years she had been receiving the letters the same man had been signing them. Once, because she had something important to tell him, Marie called the number the man always put at the top of the letters, but a woman answered Mr. Smith’s telephone and told Marie he was in an all-day meeting. Another time she called and a man said Mr. Smith was on vacation. And finally one day a woman answered and told Marie that Mr. Smith was deceased. The woman told her to wait and she would get someone new to talk to her about her case, but Marie thought it bad luck to have telephoned a dead man and she hung up.
Now, years after the woman had told her Mr. Smith was no more, the letters were still being signed by John Smith. Come into our office at 21st and M streets, Northwest, the letters said in that foreign language. Come in so we can see if you are still blind in one eye, come in so we can see if you are still old and getting older. Come in so we can see if you still deserve to get Supplemental Security Income payments.
She always obeyed the letters, even if the order now came from a dead man, for she knew people who had been temporarily cut off from SSI for not showing up or even for being late. And once cut off, you had to move heaven and earth to get back on.