Margaret Sexton - A Kind of Freedom

“Before you say anything,” Tiger went on, “just listen. That’s the problem; earlier today, I could tell you wasn’t listening, and this is complicated shit. It’s not like before. We can’t just sell to yo random-ass friends. You too good at what you do to be depriving the public, nigga; this is a goldmine and we gotta capitalize on it while it’s hot.”

And then MawMaw going and mentioning his daddy. He hadn’t thought about him in years, not the way he was thinking about him now, with longing, that old hurt he buried rising back.

“So my cousin is moving out, I’m thinking we take over his old room, switch to hydro, grow twelve plants, turn out four ounces each. So that’s three pounds, and nigga, it’s all ours to keep.”

Now there was his little boy. He spent his whole childhood fantasizing about how different he was going to be with his own, but he wasn’t sure he was going to swing it. He wasn’t stupid. You reached a certain depth in the drug world, and it was inevitable you’d be caught, but that took years; he was still riding on beginner’s luck, and all he needed was a few more months to spark a turnaround. Something big to help him scale the next bend in his life.

“And this ain’t the kind of thing you gotta do forever. I’m talking six months at the most, we get a big yield, turn a profit off it, and we set; you want to open a restaurant, do it. You want to open a clothing store, do it. The sky’s the limit, my nigga. But you gotta be ready to turn the whole thing up a notch.” He paused. “My only question is, how much it cost to buy more plants?”

The plants weren’t the half of it. It was the lamps, the power to fuel them. But maybe MawMaw knew there was something on the horizon of his life; maybe she could divine he was on the verge of something greater, and maybe she couldn’t determine the shape of it, but she could see its outline, she could estimate its weight.

“It’s cool,” T.C. nearly whispered.

“What? That’s it?”

T.C. nodded.

Tiger paused.

“All right then,” Tiger said after a minute. “All right then, dawg. That lil’ boo musta gave you what you needed ’cause you was trippin’ this morning. I thought that place had turned you out, dawg.”

“When were you thinking we could start?” T.C. asked.

“Today, my nigga. I got my contact who sell the seeds. They got the ride and everything. They’ll come right over.”

“Call him then,” T.C. got up for the bathroom. He remembered MawMaw, the pad bulging in her pants, the loose shirt sneaking down past her shoulder blade. He shook the image out of his head. At least when they reup’ed he could roll a blunt. He and Tiger could sit on his patio like old times stuffing their faces with Domino’s slices, or maybe they’d stay in, play Mario Kart . He had won a bronze trophy before he left, and he might as well start making plays for silver.

Summer 1944

A few weeks after the dinner, Evelyn sat in her bedroom finishing her homework, when Ruby stormed in.

Evelyn asked what was wrong, but she didn’t look up. She didn’t imagine anything substantive could be the matter. Ruby had Andrew, she had Daddy’s approval, what more did she need?

Ruby mumbled something, but Evelyn didn’t understand it and instead of digging further, she started preparing for bed.

“He’s leaving me,” Ruby repeated, this time belting it out across the room.

“Oh,” Evelyn said, with more emotion than she’d given her previous comment but far less than the situation might have appeared to require. She was surprised, and then she wasn’t. The more she’d gotten to know Andrew, the more it seemed he was a sensible type of guy. She didn’t understand what had taken him so long to see her sister wasn’t his equivalent. On the other hand, everything had been going so well.

“You’re not going to say anything else?” Ruby asked. “You’re just going to stand there and finish undressing.”

Evelyn sighed. “Was it another girl, Ruby?”

“What?” Ruby hustled up behind her. “If it was another girl, you think I’d be here crying? I’d be out somewhere screaming, I might even be swinging, but I wouldn’t be crying.”

Is that so ? Evelyn wanted to say. She remembered Ruby in the exact same position when old Langston had strayed, but Evelyn only nodded and said, “Okay then.”

Ruby got tired of waiting for a proper response and threw her handkerchief down on the floor.

“He’s going to the war,” she said, her words sputtering out, except for the last word, war, which sealed the rest of them together.

Evelyn looked up then. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, so now you’re cooking with gas. What do you think I mean? He’s going to war. He’s leaving in a couple weeks. He may never come back. What else do you need to know, Evelyn? Looks like those are the only few details that matter.”

Mother opened the door then, gleaned the problem from Ruby’s display, and wrapped her arms around her child.

“That’s okay now, my pretty baby; ah, la pauv’ piti .”

Evelyn felt sick witnessing her sister being comforted, and when Mother whispered for Evelyn to get a towel, she was happy to oblige.

Mother smiled when Evelyn handed it over, and Evelyn smiled back. She’d held a tender spot in her heart for the woman since the dinner, and a repulsion toward her father that couldn’t be tamed. It was as if all her affection toward him had shifted over to Renard. Her beau’s naïve belief that her father approved of him, his security in it, only made her love him more.

She left her mother and Ruby to mope and went out on the porch. She could hear Brother and his friends playing cops and robbers a block away. It was summer, and the orange nasturtiums and red zinnias bloomed across the street on the porch beside Miss Georgia’s rocking chair. Evelyn had already met Renard that day on North Claiborne, but some nights when he needed to see her sooner than the following afternoon, he came for her here. He’d walk by the house, kneel behind the petunia tree, and whistle. They’d walk the few blocks to a bench and though they scarcely did more than kiss, she’d been tending an irrepressible urge to allow him to make a woman out of her. Even tonight as she waited, she wondered if this night would be the one.

She dallied on the swing almost an hour — the full heat of daytime had become unbearable, but the cool night breeze felt nice on her skin. When he didn’t come, she told herself he was probably with Andrew, and she went back inside. Ruby was asleep; her mother had retired upstairs. Evelyn stood over her sister, stared at her, trying to glimpse a change. What happened to the face of a broken woman? Did it turn to convey the loss or did it conspire with her heart to hide it? Looking at her, she thought it was the former. She remembered seeing Ruby so crumpled only when she was a toddler and their mother would leave her. Now as an adult, Evelyn felt genuine sympathy for her for the first time in her life. She sat on the edge of Ruby’s bed and stroked her hair, but when Ruby stirred, Evelyn retreated back to her own corner of the room, back to her own life.

The next morning she went out in search of Renard. It was a Saturday, and she thought he’d told her he’d be working at the French Quarter restaurant that weekend. She chose one of her Sunday dresses, pinned her hair up, and dabbed a touch of lipstick on her cheek for color the way she’d seen Ruby do. Aside from Andrew, she had never been introduced to anyone in his life before, and she wanted to make a good impression.

She walked to North Claiborne, then St. Bernard, stood amid the mothers buying snap peas and chickens for their evening meal, the bakers unloading mounds of white bread. She stepped onto the bus. It was so crowded the whites were seated in the Negro section. Evelyn didn’t mind standing though, not today. The closer she got to her stop, the more excited she became. She could see Renard through the restaurant window before the bus came to a complete stop. She watched him while she waited for the whites to disembark. He didn’t even know she was there. He moved in a steady rhythm, bending down to pack boxes, taping them, lifting them and stacking them in a large pile. An air of peace shone through him while he worked, almost as if he had merged with the movement itself and they were bound together on some mission that surpassed what lay ostensibly before him. She didn’t want to interrupt him; she didn’t want to interrupt something so sacred; she would say hello quickly, then head back home. She stepped off the bus and walked toward him. She was only a few feet away when a policeman approached the restaurant window. He tapped on it loudly until Renard came out, then he shouted, “There’s some trash from your store in the street, boy. Old fruit and the such. It’s starting to stink.”