Margaret Sexton: A Kind of Freedom

“What, Evelyn? You didn’t even get him to ask you on a date? Haven’t I learned you anything?” Ruby studied the air in front of her own face, as if the key to Evelyn’s incompetence might spring out of it. Then clarity came on her hard and fast. “You’re too nice to these boys, that’s what I’ve been telling you. They’re only good for two things, marriage and babies, and you’re trying to make friends with them. I’m your friend, you only need one. Next time you see him, make him work for it, and watch.” Then she laughed, tipped her head back as she turned, skipping beneath the sprawling oaks. Her pleated silk skirt waved behind her in the wind. Evelyn’s was the same material and color, but Ruby had asked their mother to take her hem in higher. Now Evelyn walked faster to keep up with her sister even as she felt the straps of her cork-soled shoes pressing into her ankles. When they neared their house, the grandest on the block, Ruby stopped, leveled her expression, reverted to her normal pace. Even still, she might not eat a single bean this evening, no matter how long the pickled meat had been soaking in the pot.

That Friday night, Evelyn lay down in bed listening to Ruby get ready, plowing through the hallways, turning the bathroom faucet to its highest setting. As big as the house appeared on the outside, it was compact inside. Evelyn and Ruby shared a room, and their baby brother’s bedroom was so adjacent to theirs, they could hear his bedsprings creak when he shifted at night. There was the parlor, but Mother didn’t like them to sit there; it was where she met each week with the Ladies of Equal Justice and the Seventh Ward Educational League. There were guest rooms upstairs next to their parents’ bedroom, but that was where Mother stored her summer drapes, her winter rugs, and, more than that, where she rested when the weight of the world hunched her shoulders.

So, Evelyn had long since learned she was stuck. Ruby had scared most of her friends off by elementary school, and the ones who lingered were gone by the end of Evelyn’s freshman year at McDonogh 35. She would never forget the time Ruby told Evelyn’s school friend in front of company that Ruby had heard the girl’s mama had run off to pass in Mississippi. That had been the one friend Evelyn still thought of sometimes. She couldn’t remember a single thing the girl said, but she did remember that they’d practice elocution and debating in the Hi Smile print shop; that during breaks they’d walk up and down South Rampart Street, peer through the windows at the shoe and jewelry stores. Sometimes they’d stop at Peter’s Famous Creole Kitchen for an oyster sandwich and watch the neighborhood folk walking by. There was a feeling Evelyn could access then that she hadn’t had since that girl ran off; it was a different kind of comfort than she had with her sister. It wasn’t as deep, but Evelyn felt it more deeply because to her it seemed earned. That girl hadn’t had to love her; she could have been in anyone’s company, but she chose Evelyn’s, and Evelyn missed that.

Ruby bounced into the room then.

“Are you just going to sit up here all night with Brother?” she asked, nodding at the only boy, the baby of the family who stood in their doorway.

“I ain’t staying in this house.” Brother dashed through their room just then for the front door.

“ Am not staying , Brother,” Evelyn corrected, “and where are you going?”

“Ain’t none of your concern.” Just as he spoke, they heard the neighborhood boys outside screaming for him to hurry before the bakery closed and they missed the brokers, scraps of cookies and cakes the owner distributed after dark. Brother screamed back.

Their mother’s voice rang out close behind.

“Don’t you raise your voice like that, Nelson Jr. You better act like you’re from the Seventh Ward.”

Ruby smirked. “And you better be back before Mama turns that parlor light out,” she added.

Evelyn started to chime in with another admonition, but Ruby stopped her.

“And what about you? You’re all worried about Brother. What are you going to do?”

“I’ll figure something out,” Evelyn said, though they both knew there was nothing to figure out. Sometimes she would join Miss Georgia across the street to help her knit the winter gloves and scarves she sewed year-round. There were other girls at Dillard who went out on the weekends, mostly to movies at the Circle Theater, and she’d hear them on Monday raving about Humphrey Bogart or Ingrid Bergman. Those mornings, she’d wonder if maybe there was something wrong with her in the social department. She’d heard people were sometimes born with certain deficiencies, like Brother read backward, and maybe hers was in the area of people, organizing interactions with them, what she would do, what she wouldn’t do fogging over into an unthinkable plot of her mind, and that was why she was stuck at home on a Friday night when even her twelve year-old brother had plans to do something mystical.

The kicker came when Evelyn’s mother strutted up to Evelyn’s bedroom door in a rabbit fur. Evelyn’s daddy eased up behind his wife. He placed his hand on the bottom of her stomach, and his thin gold wedding band shone from across the room.

“Where are you going, Daddy?” Evelyn asked.

“Aw, just to Uncle Franklin’s.”

In all Evelyn’s folding and unfolding of her memories of Renard, she had forgotten it was February, and every first Friday of February, Uncle Franklin and his wife, Katherine, threw a pre — Mardi Gras soirée.

“Oh. Well, have fun,” Evelyn said just above a whisper.

“What’s that, baby?” Daddy walked over.

Her mother excused herself. “I’ll be in the parlor when you’re ready, Nelson.”

“All right, Josephine,” her daddy called back, then he eased over to the edge of Evelyn’s bed, sat down, and combed his fingers through her hair. The two couldn’t look any more different. Evelyn had a sharp, narrow nose, her eyes were light brown, not so brown they looked black like most other Negroes’; her lips were thin and pink, and like her mother and sister, she was the color of a Spanish woman more than a Negro one. Her daddy on the other hand was a black man. Born of freed Senegalese people who never mixed, his color was so notable in the Seventh Ward that it was the first thing people said about him when they wanted to reference him but not give him too much shine. “That big black doctor that think real high of himself,” they’d whisper. His lips were thin, but everything else about him screamed Africa: his broad nose and wide nostrils and his hair, which he slapped pomade in but which reclaimed itself by afternoon, shooting out in rough bunches.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Oh nothing, Daddy.”

“Don’t tell me ‘nothing.’ Daddy can tell when his Evie is paining inside.”

Evelyn just sighed and brought her arm over her face.

“Don’t tell me you’re still too scared to stay alone. I can run Ruby’s man off, and she can stay with you.”

“No, Daddy,” Evelyn said forcefully so she wouldn’t have to repeat it. Ruby would never let her hear the end of it if that happened. “I just wished I had something to do tonight is all.”

“Play with your brother, then. You’re not too old for that, are you?”

“Brother’s not even here. He’s out with the twins.”

“You want me to call him inside?” Evelyn’s daddy leaned toward the window, preparing to shout.

“No, Daddy. We don’t play together anymore anyway. I’m too old to play any games he’d be interested in.”

Her daddy sighed and propped on his elbow on the bed beside her. “Baby girl, you want me and your mama to stay in with you tonight?”