Walter Mosley - Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore

Soon they all flitted away to a bush of yellow flowers on the far side of the pool.

Not long after that the sun began to set. I was sad and peaceful sitting there.

“Oh dear,” Marcia said after a while.

“What, Mrs. Pinkney?”

“I can’t seem to stand up.”

“Is something wrong?”

“I think it’s the gin,” she said, and then chuckled.

I giggled along with her.

“Let me help you,” I said.

I tried to get up but failed on the first attempt. Taking a deep breath I tried once more, stood up, and stayed in that posture. I found that I could maintain that stance as long as I held on to the edge of the aluminum table.

“Your sheets are in the wind too,” Marcia said.

I wondered if the words actually meant what she was saying. It didn’t matter — the old racist and I understood each other quite well.

“I should put you to bed,” I said.

I helped Marcia Pinkney to her feet and walked with her to the many-windowed master bedroom. I helped her off with the white dress and laid her down, pulling the blankets up to her chin.

I thought she had fallen back asleep but then she grabbed my hand.

“Don’t go when you’re still tipsy, dear,” she said.

“Don’t you worry,” I said. “I’ll sit out on the couch and watch TV until I’m sober enough to drive.”

In the living room I contemplated watching the old console television but gave up the notion. Just the idea of the jangled sounds and shifting images made me queasy. I sat on an ugly maroon couch that was built to seat two. On a green stone table next to it was a framed photograph of Theon when he was maybe thirteen. He was smiling with his mouth but not his eyes. I saw in the child the future man.

This vision brought a sigh from deep in my lungs.

I cradled the picture and sat back on the unsightly but comfortable couch.

It was so strange to be out in Pomona sharing confidences with Theon’s mother. One of the reasons he married me was that he knew that she and I could never be friends. Theon didn’t trust his mother. He believed that she could have saved him from his father’s savage beatings but that she did not because she didn’t love him enough. This distinction was very important to him: His mother did love him but not enough to save him.

Smiling at the thought of my dead husband’s delicate psyche I closed my eyes. When I opened them again the sky had lightened. The sun was not yet up but dawn was coming.

I stumbled out to my car and popped the trunk. There I kept a small leather bag with all my toiletries. I brought this into the house, found a guest toilet far from Marcia’s bedroom, and did my morning cleanup.

At least I didn’t have to shave.

Before leaving I peeked in on Marcia. With her defenses of nostalgia and gin she was able to appear somewhat in charge of her diminishing domain. But sleep took away her armor, leaving an old woman bereft of everything she’d lived for.

I thought about the word bereft and remembered Jude Lyon. When Theon had told me that Jude was dangerous there was actual fear in his tone.

I left a note on the kitchen table with my red phone number on it. Then I walked out into the weak sunshine of early morning, put the toiletry bag back into the trunk, and made it to the driver’s seat. There I closed the car door but had to stay still for a few moments in deference to my body’s memory of the alcohol.

My head ached and there was a buzzing in my ear.

I considered letting the seat back and napping for a while before driving off.

A few more minutes passed.

Then there came a tapping on the window.

I turned and saw a uniformed policeman. He’d rapped on my glass with his nightstick. In the side-view mirror I could see at least two other cops approaching.

I was that fifteen-year-old girl again, praying for a Theon Pinkney to help me escape.

The cop motioned for me to roll down the window.

An instantaneous chemical reaction purged me of the hangover.

I opened the car door.

“I said to put down the window.” The cop raised his voice enough for the tones to shift while he was speaking.

“To do that I’d have to turn the ignition,” I said, back in full control of my tongue.

“Get out,” he commanded.

I smiled, swiveled, and stood.

“Lift your hands at your side,” another policeman said.

I’d had a hundred directors telling me what to do with my body parts. These were just two more.

The first cop was white — they all were white — and male. He, the first one, went into the car while the second director turned me around, pushed my arms down behind my back, and put handcuffs on my wrists. I let my body go limp in order to minimize the bruising from the adrenaline-filled police.

I was turned around, not gently.

“You broke into this home,” a gray-headed policeman told me. He wore reflective sunglasses and had almost indiscernible gray stubble on his chin. His breath was both minty and sour.

“No. I was visiting my mother-in-law,” I said. “Now I’m going home.”

“Yeah, sure,” the cop said. “We got the call from a neighbor that a black woman was breaking into her neighbor’s home, taking things from the house and putting them in her trunk.”

My big blue bag was in the trunk with my father’s gun inside. I had a carry permit in my wallet, but if the constabulary was not inclined to believe me then they didn’t have to believe my documents either.

If my hair was long and white and my eyes the color of the ocean they would have recognized me immediately, maybe asked for an autograph . I wrote these words in my little journal not long after that encounter. Of course, now I realize that if I were a white woman driving a pale blue Jaguar the cops would have never put cuffs on me; they would have never been called to the scene or, if called, they might not have come.

“Whose car is this?” the gray cop asked.

“Mine.”

“Where’s your license?”

“Free my hands and I’ll get it for you.”

“You’re under arrest,” he said, and was preparing to say more.

“What’s the problem here?” a strong female voice inquired.

I was surprised to realize that tone had come from Marcia Pinkney.

She was wearing a brown housecoat and turquoise slippers. Her left hand clutched the housecoat at her breast and her right hand was held out to reiterate the question in case the officers were deaf — or dumb.

“Ma’am,” Gray Cop said. “Is this your house?”

“Of course. Why do you have my daughter-in-law in chains?”

“Um,” he said. “Daughter-in-law?”

“Answer my question, young man.”

“We got a call from across the street that a black woman had broken into this house.”

“And you were going to arrest her without even knocking on the door?”

“We had to secure her first. Um. Are you okay, ma’am?”

“Of course I am. Don’t you see me?”

“Because we have her in custody. You don’t have to be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid of my daughter-in-law, Mrs. Theon Pinkney. She’s the one who should be afraid. Four big men grabbing her and putting her in chains. What’s wrong with you?”

The police stood there, slightly confused. I could see that they felt justified, even righteous, for grabbing me in Marcia’s driveway. There was no question in their minds that I was a criminal and that they were on the side of the Law.

Marcia glanced at me then. We’d spent hours together but it was as if she hadn’t really gotten a good look at me until seeing the tableau in her driveway.

“Take those chains from my daughter-in-law’s arms,” she said, sounding just a little like her son.