Edward Jones - All Aunt Hagar's Children

For weeks following Bethany’s recovery, Anita tried recalling a few lines from Porgy and Bess about Methuselah. She, at thirteen, had watched the musical that first time one Sunday night on television with her mother while her father and brother had gone to a movie. Anita sat with her legs on the couch and her mother was at the other end, Anita’s blanketed feet in her lap. Each time Sidney Poitier appeared, they pretended to swoon. She knew that the lines she wanted to remember began with What’s the use, but she couldn’t get hold of any words beyond that. What’s the use…What’s the use… She had failed to find the tape of the musical’s songs. Maybe she had left it in Germany. Maybe she had lost the tape on the way to Germany, or on the way back. Sprechen see what I mean…What’s the use…

Her great fear was that her daughter would become her and live some of her best young days in bed and on the couch. The whole world was out there and she wanted Bethany to know every molecule of it, but blood was blood, and in her own blood floated molecules that were up to no good. The whole world was why she had said yes to going to Germany when the army people stationed Percival there. Corporal Channing. But the days and nights had been long with him not there, and when he was there, the days and nights were even longer. What’s the use… So back home to Washington, though one good thing was that Bethany had absorbed German in their two years there, could speak it as well as any German child born to it. Sprechen see what I mean… The New Day Arising Christian School had no one who spoke German, so Anita had had to hire a Catholic University graduate student to keep the language alive in the child, though Bethany could barely remember life in Germany. She did know that when she measured the distance on Mr. Methuselah’s globe, the country was two whole hands from the little star that was Washington, D.C.

“Mama, what did Mama Channing die with?”

They were in the car and they were returning from the National Arboretum. It was Friday afternoon, a time she had begun to give only to her child. One more report to the District Building had been written from the Northeast outpost before she left work early.

“Mama, what did Mama Channing die with?” the child asked again.

“Why?” Anita said. She looked at her daughter in the rearview mirror, then at the tiny statue of Saint Christopher with its magnetic base on the dashboard.

“Mr. Methuselah wants us to write down what age our grandparents was when they died, and if they’re alive now, how old they are.”

“What kind of assignment is that, honey?” Saint Christopher never moved, no matter how bumpy the road.

“I don’t know. It’s Mr. Methuselah’s assignment. So what age did Mama Channing die?”

“I’ll have to find out. I don’t know it off the top of my head.”

“So everybody else is alive, all my other grandparents?”

“You know that already.”

“So what about great-grandparents? Their ages when they died, since they’re all dead?”

“Bethany!” The child sometimes talked in her sleep, and when she did, the words were sometimes German. “Bethany!”

“It’s not me, Mama. It’s Mr. Methuselah. You know what? He said we could all live forever as long as we first accepted Jesus. He said we could resurrect what was in that other Methuselah. He said we could be better than the other Methuselah. He was only nine hundred years old, but we could live as long as we wanted. And Reggie said could we live till one hundred cause his grandfather died when he was like only ninety-nine, and Mr. Methuselah said we could live ten times one hundred. And Reggie said could we live till five thousand years, and Mr. Methuselah said yes, as long as we accepted Jesus and everything He stood for.” Anita had taken to marking off the days after the child’s recovery. She had forgotten to do it that morning because the fever and sore throat were getting further and further away. “So I need all the dates for Monday.” She said nothing for a while, and Anita looked at her again in the mirror. “I guess, like…” They were on New York Avenue, having passed North Capitol Street. Sixteenth Street where her parents lived was far ahead.

“Guess what?” Two thousand fucking bucks a year to scare a child….

“I guess Mama Channing didn’t accept Jesus.”

“Your grandmother accepted Him more than anyone I know, Bethany. Don’t let anyone tell you any different.”

“Well, she’s not here. She didn’t live till a hundred. She probably didn’t even live till ninety-nine. Mr. Methuselah said we’re lucky cause Jesus doesn’t go everywhere. He’s not in Lapland. He’s never going to Lapland.”

“He’s everywhere people need Him, Bethany.”

“Maybe not in Lapland. They don’t need Him in Lapland.”

At 7th Street, Anita made a right and soon turned left so she could go down Massachusetts Avenue. Ah yes, she thought as she looked at the fish symbol on the bumper sticker on the car ahead. Ah yes…

What’s the use a livin

When nobody’s givin

To a man who’s nine hundred years old…

That Sunday evening on the couch, she had not known what the singer was meaning until her mother started giggling just after the word “givin,” and then she knew very well.

Ihave this cancer shit. I have this cancer thing.” He did not say “breast,” and he would not until he was in Washington, at Walter Reed. “They’re sayin good things and whatnot, but I don’t know….” Given the distance between them, the connection was not altogether bad, unlike many other times. Given the ten or twelve hours between them. The connection had always been good to Germany.

“Percy…I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, well.” He sounded weak, she thought, but maybe what the telephone gave in the clarity of words, it took back in other ways. “I was wonderin if yall could come see me. You and Bethany. They say family is important with this kinda thing.”

“I know it is, but…”

“Try, all right. Try.”

“Okay, but if not Bethany, then I’ll make it.” Until she landed in Los Angeles, with Honolulu still to come, she would not think to ask what type of cancer. “Give a try…,” Percival said. She felt the conversation ending, and she was trying to think of what one was supposed to say. She knew there was something to be done in such situations, for she had seen it done before, though she could not remember if she had read it in a book or seen it in a movie or a parent had told her. And then, only seconds before the conversation ended, she remembered. “Percy, I love you.”

“Yeah. Okay. Me, too.”

It was evening for her, her child safe and healthy and asleep, and there in the armchair, her feet on the ottoman, she closed her eyes and began praying for Sergeant Percival Channing. Her first prayers for anything in a long time. There was a saint Catholics prayed to when there was illness, but she could not remember the name, could not recall if it was a man or a woman. Maybe Saint Methuselah. She continued on with a second Lord’s Prayer. In the middle of it, she realized she had forgotten what the father of her child looked like. She thought there was a picture next to the armchair, but she was wrong. It was across the room, too far away to make it out clearly, and she was quite comfortable where she was. But perhaps a husband with cancer was worth a trip across the room. A journey of a few steps. Hear our prayer Saint Christopher as we make this journey. In the morning she began to see the trip to Okinawa, and his illness, as a way for them to reestablish something. “I’ll be all that you need. I’ll be a parent,” Percival had said after she, two months pregnant, knew that her father was drifting away from her. “Watch. You’ll see.”