He could laugh at the way life was folded, almost exactly on top of itself and upside down. He was, he is, a deeply and easily amused man who didn't think life meant anything, who wasn't afraid of God, or beholden to God, or grateful to God, or mad at God. He didn't seem to think at all on God and consequently didn't mind that God didn't think on him.
All of this drew me in like fresh clean water. I was so tired of talking to God. It was good to talk to R. He talked back, and he fucked, and he kissed. He was better than God; then he was my God. He taught me how to read and write, and it was as if he created me. I started writing and it was just like he took a rib from my chest and created a partner for me. Adam had Eve and I have pages. My pages are my Eve and they are my Cains and my Abelsand the generations descended from Adam. I liked R.-sure enough. Liked him the way I liked God. I admired him and wanted things from him. I took my little petitions to him and they were answered.
I didn't start loving him until he saw Other. I didn't start loving him till he wanted her and me, but wanted me more. I didn't start loving him till he preferred me to her. Oh God, I loved him then. So much was reconciled for me in his reach for my nipple before her breast, my kiss before her breath, so much reconciled and so much redeemed, forever reconciled and forever redeemed.
And now it's coming unraveled. What if Mammy always loved me, and loved me more? What if Garlic was right? What if Lady was black and loved me and loved me more? What if I had never lost the first race?
What does that do to the savor of the second? Why was I all the time looking over R.’s shoulder at the Congressman walking away from me? Why was the Congressman walking away with a dark lady? Why am I not considered the most beautiful woman in the Capital City? How much longer shall I stay here?
It. came to me last night and I could not move myself to turn toward him. In my mind I said, "Hand, reach to him"; in my mind I said, "Leg, raise up and drape on him." In my mind I moved to caress him in all my old ways, but my body didn't move. He waited for me as he sometimes does. I am twenty-nine years old. Or am I thirty-one?
For fifteen years he has come to me quickly and directly or still and waiting. Never exchanging touch for touch as we did in my dreams. He touched me, or I touched him. Tonight he lay waiting, and I found no way to touch him. He closed his eyes and said to me, Et tu, Brute? Et tu? Then he told me the story and we were back to the days I was fifteen and he was just over thirty; he was young and I was younger; he was teacher and I was student; yes, he told me of Caesar and the friend who betrayed him, the last one to stab him, and we wrestled like bears in the bed, arms grabbing arms, rolling around in the bed, laughing, because this is what we loved, him teaching me, and me touching him. It was good for us, that. Good and gone, like the wind done gone.
Congressman stopped by to discuss something with R. When I carried in a decanter, the Congressman seemed to be studying the angels dancing on the toe of his boot. He didn't meet my eye. R. smiled on me fondly and took the decanter from my hand. When the door was closed, I could hear R. laughing. If the Congressman made a sound, you couldn't hear it on my side of the door. I would have liked to stay and visit. But it wasn't mine to linger without invitation. I went upstairs and started sorting clothes, first mine, then his. Those are the jobs that remain to me, the ones that require discernment.
R. is having the house packed up. He wants to sail for Europe. London to begin. One of the colored girls from Nashville spoke to me of London. She sang there, or hoped to sing, for the Queen-is that how it was? Or had she already done it. Queen Victoria, who took sides against the slave trade, short and squat with lots of babies. I would like to see Buckingham Palace, and the Thames River, and the white cliffs of Dover again. I would like to see something more than the dark Mississippi or the lingering Potomac. He says we'll leave from New York. But I am not leaving for New York. I'm looking for the words to tell him that I wish to remain in the Capital City.
on it will be Easter. I like the preacher at my Washington church.
I can walk to the church from our townhouse. He was enslaved in Mississippi. He came to Washington looking for a wife he had lost before the war. He had been sold down the river into Louisiana, but he heard his wife had made it into Georgia, then up into Washington, so he came here. Truly, it was not the wife he was looking for, but the children, who had gone with the wife. He loved him some children, that man did, loved him some children. Around Atlanta he tired of looking.
My Congressman has never been married. Rosie sews a little for his sister. Rosie says his sister "always be after him 'bout marryin'.
"Specially when dis young friend of hern come by. She ain't 'exactly a pretty girl, but they say she, Corinne, be real smart. She wear these round gold glasses and she got a neat-enough figure, just ain't much to it. But they say she went to Mount Holyoke, passin', for a year, and that's supposed to be something'. She graduated from Oberlin." Rosie says the Congressman say, "A man who can't protect a woman ought not get married." She say his sister say, "If you can't protect a woman, no colored man in this country can." The Congressman don't answer that. At least not so Rosie can hear. I'm wondering what his answer is.
After the war my preacher got baptized and came up to Washington. He's real easy on the eyes and not so hard on the conscience. The old ladies like it when he comes to call. I can't wait to hear him preach Easter Sunday. I'll wear my new hat.
I have had a life, and all of it is divided, but not like the newspapers up North say.
When I saw R. in his army uniform, it killed something in me. Even now, when he lies naked in my bed, why do I sometimes see those brass buttons on him, see them when I don't want to see them? Why do I touch the little knobs on his chest and pull them like pulling the brass off his jacket? When I see the brass on the jacket, why do I hear coins jangling in my father's pocket?
All Daddy counted was acres. All Other counted were the coins. All I count is the slaves, trying to get the number down to ought. Always ending up with one; sometimes it's Mammy and sometimes it's me. There always seems to be one of us who don't want to be free.
Angs are not easy for my Congressman. There are Negroes in the Congress now and one or two in governors' mansions, but the tide is turning. R. doubts my Congressman will be re-elected. I fear he will lose his seat at my table as well as his seat in the Congress. If R. has no use for him, he'll find no place for him. It would be beyond the breadth of R.’s imagination or the length of his eyes to see our friendship. To give the devil his due, if R. saw our friendship he might stir a breath to protect it. He is not a man lacking in generosity. But you can't protect what you don't see. The Congressman will lose our house with his seat.
I didn't read the papers till I came to this city. I have been a farm girl even when I was a farm girl living in town. All I knew were the people on our place, the land, the sky above, the crop, and dreams printed on paper and bound in leather covers. Here the dreams walk and talk, eat and spit. The world comes to me. Comes to my table for dinner, invites me to tea, sits by my pot while I drink my morning coffee. I who didn't know till days after the war had begun or until days after the war ended. Now I sit in the shadows of those making the news of the day.
Reconstruction has been under attack from the moment it was born. The Klan is on the rise and increases in its violence. No one knows how long we coloreds will keep the vote. The Freed Men's Bureau is overrun with people who can't read or write, who don't know how old they are or where they were born, but are looking for somebody-a wife, a mother-whose name they cannot spell, whose age they do not know, whose state of residence they do not know. These are the people I lend money to. I know the time and day I was born. Mammy made Lady write it down.