So Belle waited, but Geoff did not return. And during those days, Zulu came by, knocking, even on days that weren’t Wednesday. She only spoke to him through the door, her face resting against the wood. She was tired, she told Zulu. She didn’t feel like company.
Another week passed, and she called her mother. “I might come home to visit. Would that be all right?”
“Girl, you know I want to see y’all! Come on if you coming.”
“It’s just gone be me and Lydia.”
“What about Geoff?”
“He can’t take off from school. You know, with studying and everything . . .” Belle’s voice trailed. She’d never considered having this conversation. She was making things up as she went along.
“Belle, what-all’s going on up there?”
“Nothing. I just miss y’all. I . . . I miss home.”
“Uh-huh.” Her mother paused. “Then you come on home, baby. You know you surely welcome.”
The next afternoon, Belle dressed in the clothes she used to wear, before she’d been trying to recapture her husband’s attention. One of her dresses from high school that came four inches below the knee. She washed and pressed her hair, which had grown down to her shoulders, because she didn’t want to be a hypocrite. This was the way women in Chicasetta wore their hair. She had her own style of dressing, and it definitely wasn’t anybody’s dashiki, but she left off the hat and gloves. It was still summer; she didn’t want to look ridiculous.
She left the baby with Diane and walked the several blocks to Evelyn Dawson’s, and by the time she tapped on Evelyn’s front door, she had blisters on the back of her heels. She told herself she shouldn’t be ashamed of herself. She was only going to talk to the person who was trying to break up her family, woman to woman. Belle told herself she was doing this for Lydia, so her child could grow up with a father in the house.
She didn’t have to search the neighborhood for Evelyn. She lived on the same block as the community center, in a two-story dwelling with a large covered porch and concrete steps bordered by short brick pillars. There were flowers everywhere, and Belle’s heart drained to see a vegetable patch in a corner of the small yard. She recognized tomatoes and a basil plant.
Evelyn didn’t act surprised to see her. She asked Belle inside and offered coffee or tea, but Belle requested water. Evelyn told her she knew why she was here, but she didn’t mind the visit.
“I don’t know what Geoff has told you about me—”
“Not much,” Evelyn said. “And I haven’t asked.”
“All right. I’ll tell you myself. I’m from a little town in Georgia called Chicasetta. And where I’m from, we talk straight. So I’m going to ask you, is this thing you got going on with my husband serious?”
Evelyn smiled. “Define ‘serious.’”
“Are y’all in love? Do y’all want to get married? After he and I divorce, I mean?”
Evelyn reached to a side table. She picked up a pack of cigarettes and shook two out, halfway. When she offered one, Belle waved her hand. No thank you, and the woman lit the other cigarette. Evelyn wasn’t nervous or stalling for time, only thoughtful, as she blew smoke.
“Marriage is a convention of the establishment,” she said.
“What’s that mean?” Belle asked.
“It means that I don’t need a label to justify what I feel or what I’m doing. I care for Geoff, and I’m pretty sure he cares for me. But marriage is a white man’s concept.”
“Not when you have a baby.”
“Look around, Belle.”
So this woman knew her name. She wondered who had mentioned it, her husband or Zulu?
“There are plenty sisters in this neighborhood with babies and they aren’t married.”
“And they’re not getting their bills paid, either,” Belle said.
“That’s how you define happiness? With money? Then you should be happy already. From what I know of Geoff, he’s taking care of his responsibilities.”
It was true. He had waited until Belle had gone to the grocery store and placed the monthly stipend his parents gave him on the kitchen table. When she checked inside, he hadn’t taken anything for himself.
This conversation wasn’t going the way Belle had planned. Evelyn didn’t have one bit of embarrassment. Nor was she trying to stake a claim on Geoff because of love or another child. Instead Evelyn was speaking of Belle’s husband from familiarity, when she knew nothing of what it meant to have a man’s child inside you, to know that his seed and blood caused every bit of joy and heartache you were feeling right down to the moment when his baby split you wide open and you couldn’t walk properly for weeks. When you were worried about pissing yourself, but still had to get out of bed to feed that man’s progeny.