The Wilful Daughter Page 10

  “June, if papa has a plan. . .”

  “If papa insists on pushing Minnelsa at him, well. . .”

  “What are you planning?” Brother was breathing hard.

  June changed the subject immediately. “Remember when I wanted to be a singer.”

  “Papa would never. . . ”

  “Willie, we are not talking about papa now.”

  She stopped massaging and wrapped him in her arms. “Look Willie, I can barely get my arms around your chest.” She tickled his sides and he laughed then coughed a bit. Always that cough. “I’m gonna run away and take you to the warm Florida sun. To the ocean.”

  “I’ve never seen the ocean.”

  “I bet the Piano Man can tell us all about it.”

  Willie sighed. “June.”

  “Well, shoot. I’ve never seen the ocean either. I’ve never seen anything. I’m one of the damn Blacksmith’s daughters. I’m some queen in Atlanta, but not allowed to wander far from home.”

  “You can always go to Tyson, Alabama with mama,” he laughed. “I can’t imagine you way out in the country.”

  She tickled him again. He coughed. “I know the ocean air and being in the sun all the time would do you a world of good, Willie.” He coughed again and she sighed.

  “How do we get there, June? To the ocean, I mean.”

  “I told you, I’m gonna be a singer. Hook up with one of those bands that travels around the south and plays in the jukes, like Miss Emma’s, and save my money. Singing is the only thing I know how to do.”

  “That and being the prettiest girl in the south.”

  She kissed her brother’s head. He was sweating. He needed to rest.

  “I wonder, Willie, if I’ll ever have a big voice or a loud one. Could I sound like those big busted women in the church? Or the girl in the senior class choir who sang the graduation solo. You know who I’m talking about. Her chest heaved up and down whenever she hit the high notes.”

  June looked down and her brother was sleep. She kissed him then slipped from behind him letting him rest on the pillows, but he grabbed her hand. “Sing something for me, June. Something to help me go to sleep.”

  On her knees by his side she sang a song she had learned from their mother. She sang soft and sweet until Willie was sound asleep. When she turned to leave she saw her mother standing in the door.

  “Your voice is so beautiful, June.” Bira kissed her before going to cover her son.

  Her mother’s words made her realize her voice was getting there. Maybe she would be able to make money after all. Maybe she would be able to take care of her brother by singing.

  But the Piano Man was there. The well traveled Piano Man. He could marry her and they could move to Florida. She would make him take Willie with them. June Brown was not going to be an old maid in the Blacksmith’s house.

  * * *

  By his third full week in Atlanta it was common knowledge that the Piano Man was teaching music at Morris Brown, playing most Sundays at the Blacksmith’s church and courting the Blacksmith’s oldest daughter.

  There was an air about the colored folks in that section of Atlanta that autumn for when they awoke at the crack of dawn to the pounding from the Blacksmith’s hammer they could tell it was a happier swing. Those who did business with the Blacksmith, whether cash or barter, would tell you in a minute that things were looking up because they got a better deal.

  Life for the rest of the household was a bit less strained. The other daughters dared to bring their suitors home and not worry about the consequences. Fawn was being courted by an Atlanta Life Insurance agent who traveled and owned the house his mother had left him on the other side of town. Jewel’s first two beaus had been dismissed by papa as too dapper. She didn’t care, for men seemed to flock to her side whenever she crossed the street.

  “Look how she walks, Mother,” the Blacksmith said one Sunday as they walked home from church. “They are getting the wrong idea.”

  “Nonsense,” Bira responded. “It is the shape of her body that attracts men and there is nothing we can do about that. It’s the roundness of her hips, the fullness of her breasts.”

  The Blacksmith was shocked. “Bira, you are speaking of our child.”

  “William, I am speaking of a grown woman. With a tiny waist that men often spy. It is all natural.”

  He gave her a wicked smile. “Like you, my dear.”

  Most of the doctors at the colored hospital were married having been snatched by women who helped put them through medical school. But the administrator was eager to talk to Rosa, always finding an excuse to call her into his office or to be with her. Now he walked her home and brought her flowers whenever he had the chance.

  The anvil rang and everyone seemed happy in the Brown household except June.

  More than ever she resented her father and her sisters. She smiled lovingly at her mother, nodded in response to her father’s questions and talked with no one except Willie.

  “They’ll be married soon, you know,” he told her one night as she sat on his bed and let him brush her hair.

  “Who are you talking about?” June answered absentmindedly.

  “Minnelsa and Peter, silly. I think I’ll paint their wedding portrait as a gift. What do you think, June? Would that be a nice gift?”

  She snatched her brush from him. “What I say is that he’ll never marry her. It can’t happen.”

  “It’s gonna happen,” Willie said. “He hasn’t asked her yet, because it hasn’t been the proper amount of time.”

  “Proper amount of time, my foot. He hasn’t asked her because he isn’t going to ask her. He still wants me. He’s going to ask me.”

  Willie saw the crazed look in his sister’s eyes. It was the look June had when she was determined to have her way. “Peter Jenkins hardly even speaks to you, June, so why would he want to marry you?”

  Without turning to look at him, without taking her eyes off of the lovely starry night, her face began to beam, to shine. “If you had been there the first time we met. If you had seen how he looked at me, Willie. . .”

  “Most men look at you special, June. You’re probably one of the most beautiful women in the world.”

  “But he wasn’t looking at me because of that, Willie. He looked like. . .” She reached into the air to take the right words, as if they were hanging there for the asking. When she found them she closed her eyes as if to remember something more precious than life. “He looked like a man in love is supposed to look.

  “He wanted me, he loved me, desired me. All he could see was me. His hands kept moving on that old clunky piano. But it was because his hands weren’t a part of him. His hands knew all that music all by themselves. It was because of that freedom that he could look at me and concentrate on what he was doing.”

  With a wide eyed grin she turned to her brother and grabbed his hands. She squeezed them hard and Willie almost yelled. “He fell in love with me that very moment, Willie. I know it. And when he walked into this house, he had no idea that papa would force Minnelsa off on him. What could he do but agree to take her?

  “So he courts her for a while. It makes papa happy, mama happy. It makes Minnelsa happy. Fawn and Jewel and Rosa get to bring home whoever they please because they feel papa won’t mind now that Minnelsa has a beau. But Willie, he’ll only court her for a while. You’ll see. He’ll ask for me soon. He loves me.”

  Willie shook his head and started to speak when she told him: “Where do you think I was tonight, brother. With Ross? Yes, I went out with him. But I went to see the Piano Man play. He still goes back to Emma’s three times a week. He told me it’s because he doesn’t have a piano of his own and there’s not one in Mrs. Maples house. I know that’s the reason he’d give if papa ever heard.

  “And papa is not going to hear. The Piano Man is doing everything right. The way papa wants it. Playing at the church-he told me he was doing that just to become a part of the community here. Not everybody around here g
oes to Emma’s. He likes it here and he wants papa’s respect.”

  “What does he say about Minnelsa?” Brother asked her.

  June smiled. “He says: ‘You have a nice family and a nice sister.’ He never says he wants to marry her.”

  “He wouldn’t tell you, June.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he wouldn’t let you be the first person to know that he intends to marry her. He’d tell papa first.”

  “NO!” June shouted and Willie shushed her hoping that she wouldn’t awaken the entire household.

  “June, he comes here to see her. Not to see you. Not matter what he says to you at Emma’s”

  June shook her head her face lined with sorrow: “Watch, you’ll see. He’ll tell papa the truth. He’ll tell papa he loves me.”

  Willie didn’t dare disagree with her. It was useless trying to talk with June when she was like that. So he suggested they both get some sleep and she left with a foolish dreamy-eyed look. There was no way to tell her this dream was not going to come true.

  He didn’t tell her what had been said just two nights before when he had joined their father and the Piano Man to smoke the cigars that the Piano Man gave the Blacksmith. Expensive cigars from Cuba.

  Willie had never been allowed in papa’s study when the company of men gathered and this made him feel like a man. Smoking cigars and drinking brandy, even though if mama had known Willie had one sip she might have removed him from the room in fear for his health. It was in the room that papa kept for himself. Only on occasion did mama sit with him. She had her own sewing room where she and the girls could go. Willie sometimes sat in there with them, drew pictures of them at their work but he didn’t feel comfortable. He didn’t feel he belonged.

  He belonged in papa’s sitting room. In this room were books that the children were allowed to read only with the old man’s permission. In this room was a small wooden cabinet with glass doors at the top that enclosed fine crystal glasses the girls only got to dust. At the bottom behind wooden doors were the bottles of brandy that had been given to papa by the white folks who had gone abroad and had them secretly shipped back within the boxes of china and cups and crystal.

  Papa would go to his room and close the doors and read by himself. Some nights Willie was allowed to read with him. These were the evenings when mama was in her sewing room with the girls. Willie would poke his head in and father would say: “Of course you can come and read with me. Don’t need to be around women all the time.” Papa, however, had never come right out and asked Willie to sit in there. It was always an after thought.

  Except for the night when the Piano Man brought the cigars.

  The room had four large overstuffed chairs, all of the same pattern that mama had chosen for its masculinity. Willie lowered himself into the one he always used and pointed to Peter where to sit. Papa’s chair was special for at the right hand was a table with a lamp and a book with a marker where he had stopped reading. Papa served each of them a brandy and then suggested a toast.

  “To the finer things in life,” he said lifting his glass to his companions. “To good food, beautiful women, and the money needed to enjoy them.”

  Willie almost laughed, Peter smiled and said: “Here, here.” So Willie followed suit and said: “Here, here” too. Then they each took a sip.

  Willie had never had spirits. He was not fond of the taste for it burned a little as it went down. He sipped slowly because he wanted to stay and not disappoint his father.

  “Sir, this room is remarkable.” Peter Jenkins looked about. The walls were made of the finest wood; there were shelves of books that reached the ceiling. There was a large white marble fireplace with a matching mantle. “It’s a cross between a den and a library.”

  “Its acquisition was somewhat strange” The Blacksmith sipped the brandy and Willie sat back to listen to the old familiar story. He leaned against the gleaming fireplace and positioned himself to speak, like an orator on a podium, Willie thought. He had seen one outside the general store once telling people about Africa and a Man named Garvey. June didn’t want to stay and listen. He assumed she was not interested in what the man had to say because he was not handsome. But the way the man spoke reminded him of papa that night.

  “Before Minnelsa was born and people knew me well, my colored customers were few and some of them very poor. Often I got paid in chickens and eggs, I still get paid that way by some, so I had to take up other means to support myself. I was determined that my wife was not going to work in the white folks’ houses.” The Blacksmith glanced at Peter and remembered his mother. “Not that it isn’t honorable good clean work. But I wanted to have a wife that stayed at home and took care of my family.

  “So I would take my wagon out in the evenings for jobs moving things for people. Hauling paid good money, especially since I didn’t have to hire someone to work with me.

  “One day I get a message from this lady who owned the place where most of the teachers stayed that one of the professors had died in his sleep. When they got the body out she looked around and got furious. An uneducated woman,” the Blacksmith said with icy pride. “She actually wanted someone to come over and take all those books somewhere and burn them.”

  “Burn them!” Peter exclaimed as he coughed out cigar smoke.

  “She was going to pay me well for the deed but I was not about to burn books. I asked her did I have to burn them so she said: ‘Just get them outta my house. I gots to rent me this room and don’t nobody want to sleep with all these ole books.’

  “I packed them carefully in one load in my old wagon, it was bigger then the one in the back now, and brought them here. For years I had to come in here and sit on the floor in front of the fireplace to read at night. But as things got better, so did the room. I got more books, had the shelves made. Then I had an excellent stone cutter to make this fireplace and mantle. I even got a photographer to take a picture of my wife and daughters.”

  Willie looked at the photograph over the fireplace. The family portrait he painted once hung there. It was there only a few days before the photographer showed up. When the photo came back, the Blacksmith had it framed and took the painting down. Mama had complained, but papa said he wanted something ‘more real.’ His mother hung Willie’s painting in her sewing room.

  “A very nice room, Mr. Brown. I hope one day my wife and I will have such a room.”

  “This is papa’s room,” Willie interjected fanning the smoke away as he resisted the urge to cough. The two older men put out their cigars knowing what the smoke might do to the boy. The Blacksmith cut Willie a smile. “But sometimes mama sits with him.”

  “Well, I think men need places of their own, Willie, Mr. Brown. After all in a house with children, especially daughters, a woman is really in charge. She appoints it, decorates it, and literally owns it. A man needs a place that is his.”

  They each took a sip of brandy in agreement. What the Blacksmith said next had come as a shock to Willie. Peter, however, seemed unamazed.

  “When a man marries one of my daughters, Peter, he will have a place to build him a house. A house big enough for a big family and lots of room for a room of his own.”

  “Is that so?” Peter had said calmly. Willie almost choked on his second sip of the burning brandy.

  “Oh most definitely. A present of land is the dowry, the wedding present to each of my future sons in law. Each time I could acquire some property I did so until I had one piece for each of my daughters. I have title, deed and ownership for thousands of acres of land. Most of it is farmed and cared for by those who lease it from me. One piece I own is near the university. Just perfect for a professor and his wife. Perfect to build a house where a man can have a room and a place to teach piano to those who want to learn and better themselves.” The Blacksmith was staring directly in Peter’s face and Peter was smiling back. “But far enough from the school to keep things private.” The Blacksmith sat down and watched the Piano Man for his
reaction.

  Willie couldn’t believe what he was hearing. So the rumors he had heard were true. People always talked when the suitors for the Blacksmith’s daughters were turned away. Especially the neighbors. Brother would be out in back sitting and painting and they wouldn’t see him as they said: “Turned away another one yesterday, he sure did. Guess he don’t want none of them girls to get married and have a life of their own.”

  “Or maybe,” the other voice said, “he just don’t want to give up all that land he told everybody he got for they’s dowries. He don’t let the boy court the girl, she don’t get engaged. She don’t get engaged she don’t get married. She don’t get married he don’t have to give that boy none of his land. Fifty acres for each daughter.”

  Fifty acres of land to each husband. It was all true.

  Willie didn’t like the feeling that came over him and it wasn’t the spirits. A new chill made him shiver. Not like the illnesses that he had now and then, but like someone was walking over his grave. He didn’t want to think of Peter as one of those men looking to marry his sisters for their money. He liked Peter, liked his music, and his charming ways. He liked the fact that since Peter had come into their lives, the house had been happier. His older sisters were more youthful, dating eligible men that the Blacksmith found acceptable and giggling together in the evening about the future.

  It didn’t matter whether June understood or not because it was obvious that Peter had played his cards right. He sat and listened. He did not interject a word as the Blacksmith spoke. Willie observed this with a smile. The Piano Man was playing papa like a well tuned instrument. Every key he hit made the right sound. The Piano Man would sit and listen, ask questions, speak only at the right time, and argue only when he knew the Blacksmith wanted a good argument. Of this talent Willie was jealous. But he figured it came with age. He figured that as old as the Piano Man was he had learned something about getting what you wanted over the years. Willie listened and watched as his father continued.