He took the entire week off and stayed with his friend Freddy Hamilton, who was an English teacher. The two of them had met while graduate students at Mecca, and Freddy, a “confirmed bachelor,” had adored Uncle Root’s late wife. Freddy used to stock his refrigerator and pantry with gourmet food for Aunt Olivia: tins of caviar, paté, and exotic fruits such as mangos and papayas, and his guest room had been filled with fresh flowers and gifts. Often, the items for Aunt Olivia had been very expensive, such as the French perfume, and that red silk nightgown hanging in the guest room closet. But Uncle Root knew Freddy’s romantic interests lay with young men, so he had learned to put his jealousy aside.
At the march, Freddy kept sighing and declaring, things just weren’t the same without Aunt Olivia, and, oh, how he wished she had lived to see this gathering! The march lasted all day, but then someone announced that W. E. B. Du Bois had died in Ghana at the home of that country’s president. Uncle Root had tried to collect himself as Mahalia Jackson took the podium. She was the lead-in before King, who was the expected climax of the long march. She was resplendent in her grand, church lady hat, the spiritual she sang so familiar. And Uncle Root had taken off his own hat, using it to cover his face as he wept over the great scholar, someone he’d considered a father, if only in his fantasies.
On the phone, Uncle Root stopped speaking for seconds, while he cleared his throat ferociously. Belle was quiet, too, waiting for him to speak.
“I can’t believe it, beloved. I can’t understand the choices God makes.”
Who was he grieving, Dr. King or the great scholar? Or Aunt Olivia? Maybe he was missing everybody he’d lost from the time he was a child, and that sadness was on him, a pulsing cloud, like Belle had felt after she’d had Lydia.
She hung up and turned on the TV, hopeful that her great-uncle had been mistaken, but there was Walter Cronkite looking forlorn. When the phone rang again, it was her mother, shrieking. For five minutes, one phrase repeated: Lord have mercy. Listening to Miss Rose, Belle’s heart began to hurt. The phone sounded a third time: it was her sister-in-law, talking through her sobs. Belle told her to come on over. She didn’t have to be alone.
“Okay, but . . . can Lawrence come, too?”
“What I say? Y’all both are surely welcome.” In the kitchen, she pulled out pans and pots. Back home, Negroes would be killing chickens for the rituals of mourning. Dr. King had been a stranger to Belle, but every Negro she knew adored him. In her hometown, on her college campus, he was next to Jesus: Miss Rose kept a framed photograph of the young preacher on the living room wall. When someone died, mourners had to be nice to each other for a few days, too. The fourth call came: it was Belle’s mother-in-law, and she consoled the woman, all the while thinking, Dr. King was the only brown person her mother-in-law had admired. Belle didn’t invite Miss Claire to visit, however. Home training only went so far.
There was knocking at the door. She answered, and the young couple at her threshold looked a mess. Lawrence’s hair was rumpled, his clothes wrinkled. Diane’s face was puffy and pink. Belle opened her arms, and her much taller sister-in-law rushed to her, weeping violently as Belle rubbed her back, saying, it was all right. It was okay. Belle put two full plates on the table, and when she filled Lawrence’s coffee cup, he grabbed her hand. Soon, her husband was there. Mecca University had closed out of respect, but it had been frightening on the way home. A Negro man had blocked Geoff’s way, but he’d let him pass after Geoff recited a random poem by Langston Hughes. Despite her grief, Belle found the energy to stand over the stove. She boiled collards with a ham hock. Thawed and fried two chickens. Baked a pound cake and several pans of corn bread. Mashed sweet potatoes for the baby, and then decided to make a pie.
She put a stack of Aretha records on the player. Belle refused to call her favorite singer by her full name: where Belle came from, the last name “Franklin” was an insult. The two couples had a dance party in the living room and tried to shake off their blues. Belle taught her in-laws how to play bid whist, and Diane learned how to talk smack across the board. Unlike the young Negroes rioting outside, they obeyed rules and stayed inside: the governor had imposed a curfew. But after three days of forced isolation, tempers broke.
“I need to get out there with my brothers! I should do something!” Lawrence shouted, without rising from the couch. His wife kicked his foot and told him, lower his damned voice. She pointed at the baby’s room, where Geoff was reading Dr. Seuss out loud.