Mr. Lindsay kept approving of me, by praising my origins, and his wife agreed, when she returned. They loved my great-great-uncle; what a brilliant man Dr. Hargrace was. What a fine teacher he’d been. Routledge had been so lucky to have him for so many years. They’d met my parents, though they’d been three years behind Mama and Daddy at Routledge. And they made broad, rueful hints about a wedding, hopefully in not too many years.
When we left, Mrs. Lindsay hugged me in the foyer. Mr. Lindsay did, too, and I gave thanks to the resurrected savior that he didn’t wear the same hair oil as Gandee, because I would have vomited in the foyer, instead of waiting an hour, when Pat turned onto Highway 441. I told him, stop the car. Right now. Stop. I threw up only water.
*
There were only forty days left until Pat’s graduation when he told me it was time to come out as a couple.
“Everybody knows already. The other day, somebody called you my girlfriend.”
“But you’re graduating. How is this supposed to work?”
“I’ll be right in Athens at the University of Georgia. I can come see you all the time. Or, you know, we could get an apartment there and you could drive to classes. We could get out this funky trailer.”
“What are you saying? I love our trailer.”
Every day, it circled: his pressing me, and my excuses. I don’t want to remember his face when I told him I’d had my fun. It had been great, but it was time for me to move on. I cried myself when he started weeping.
We made love that last time, and inside me, he begged, don’t do him like this. Don’t leave him. Didn’t I know how much he loved me? I was his whole world, and I almost changed my mind, until afterward. When we lay there and Pat reminded me that his parents were coming for the graduation ceremony. Since Easter, Mr. Lindsay had talked nonstop about me.
My fears about Mr. Lindsay weren’t real. I knew that. The man couldn’t help looking like my monster of a grandfather, but I couldn’t help casting my gaze down the road of years, either. If I joined Pat’s family—if we married—there would be no logical excuse to avoid holidays with his people. My memories wouldn’t be dust, but animated flesh sitting across the table. I’d try not to vomit as I looked in the face of a man who resembled Gandee. I’d relive old outrages. I’d rush from the room as Pat tried to justify my bad manners. I’d lock myself in the bathroom while he tapped on the door, begging me to come out. Asking, Girl, what’s wrong? But I couldn’t tell him: Pat, your perfectly nice father disgusts me. And what of our offspring? How long could I keep them away from Atlanta? And when Pat insisted it was time for them to meet their grandparents, what could I say to Mr. Lindsay? What explanation could follow, after I shouted at him, don’t you dare touch my children?
*
In the morning, Pat asked me not to go back to Abdul. He had a feeling Abdul might be trying to come back around. It wasn’t only jealousy, either: something was wrong with that guy. He couldn’t be happy or treat a woman right. I deserved better. I gave Pat my promise. And I hoped he would forgive me, for hurting him. He deserved better, too.
Nguzo Saba
Sometimes, when a person is dying of a terminal disease, he rallies for a short period. His cheeks fill with color. There’s extra elasticity when he rises from the couch. He wants to buy Christmas presents himself, not send someone else out to the department store with his list. This is what happened with my father, when he was recovering from surgery after his second heart attack.
There had been the dozen bottles of pills on the dresser, but my mother hadn’t bothered to look up the names of the medicines. Her job was to take care of him and cook heart-healthy meals. Even Coco hadn’t been aware that my father would not recover. Usually she was sharp, but she was in the second year of her residency at City Memorial Hospital and she was exhausted. Daddy had deceived all of us about his grave prognosis.
It was Dr. King’s birthday when my mother found my father dead in their bedroom. They’d been planning on going to church; our priest had planned a special service. After her shower, she’d dried herself and was taking her hair from the curlers when she noticed Daddy wasn’t moving. I was her first call. She reached me at the dorm.
“Ailey, I was telling him that I’d cook him bacon, since it was a holiday. He’d been begging for months, and the one time I was going to let him cheat, he couldn’t even enjoy it. I feel so bad.”
To keep from pushing her grief forward, I wept with no noise, as her voice altered on the phone between her usual alto and a high, tormented soprano. I closed my eyes and saw her story.