Chasing Sophea: A Novel Page 5

  Not five minutes later, Aunt Baby watched Mercy peel out of the driveway in search of a husband who was on the other side of the house. She shook her head in amusement. Dumb bunny, that’s what she was, a dumb bunny in a red dress. It never occurred to Mercy to walk through the house and listen for any Miles, ‘Trane, or Bird. Even the dead knew how to find Lucius when he was on the premises. She’d slept in the same bed with the man every night for over twenty-four years and still hadn’t figured out how to follow the music. Her brain had obviously traveled down to her ass. She didn’t even ask where the meeting was. The demented heffa was probably going to drive up and down the expressway looking for a black Jaguar that was parked out front. She was a real mental giant, that one. And Lucius thought his first wife was touched in the head. Crazy bastard. He sure could pick them, her nephew—out of the frying pan and straight into the fire.

  Aunt Baby stared out the window and massaged her throbbing knee. She had no intention of allowing anyone to disturb Lucius during this crucial time—least of all his dim-witted, ticfaced wife. This family was finally changing course, and even though she knew the journey was destined to be painful, it was necessary if everything was ever going to be all right again. Yes, Lord, change was coming, and she had to be certain that they were all ready. She’d made a decision long ago on that awful day that before she left this earth, she would do all that she could to glue the fragments of her family’s life back together—even if it meant shattering it to pieces all over again. Aunt Baby continued to write her letter. She was going to California for a while. Someone had to plow the road for Lucius.

  “Relax, Dahlia. I’m not your enemy.”

  “How many people have you said that to?”

  “Why is that important?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I feel like I’m being forced to be here. This is our fourth session, and I don’t feel any different. I mean, I know obviously something is going on with me, but I don’t appreciate being ordered to see you.”

  “Understandable, but now that you are here, why don’t we make the best of our time together, hmmmm?”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Dahlia, give me a chance to help you. Help me help you.”

  “What is it that you want from me? I’m here, aren’t I? That should count for something.”

  “Why are you here, Dahlia? I know you’ve said your husband ordered you to come. What was it exactly that prompted this visit?”

  “You get right to the point, don’t you, Doc?”

  Dahlia reclined and found it difficult to respond. But at last the words found a place in her throat and regrettably slid out of her mouth. “I … I soiled myself in front of my students.”

  “What do you mean, exactly, soiled yourself?”

  “And they tell me you have a Ph.D.”

  “All right. For clarification purposes, liquid or solid?”

  “Liquid.”

  “Oh. I see. Try and remember precisely what you were doing and feeling before this happened.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been trying to block the entire incident out of my mind. Milky doesn’t even know about it. I am—I was too humiliated to tell him.”

  “Try to remember how the day began, and we’ll work from there.”

  “I didn’t want to get out of bed that morning. God, I was so exhausted. I’m always so wiped out. I remember arriving to class late, and then I remember feeling wet. That’s it. I don’t even remember leaving.”

  “Do you remember where you went after you left the school?”

  “Yes, I think I went home because I had a headache.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I changed my clothes.” Dr. Kelly noticed that she looked puzzled.

  “Did anything else unusual happen that day?”

  “You mean other than the puddle around my leg thing?”

  “Yes, anything in addition to that.”

  “Nothing that I want to mention right now.”

  “All right.”

  “Can we move on?” Dahlia asked, somewhat irritated.

  “You’ve been having a lot of headaches lately, yes?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “Are these headaches affecting your relationship with your husband and your daughter, Isabel?”

  Dahlia looked away. She was still tired—tired of feeling tired and tired of this conversation.

  “Dahlia, have you ever considered that maybe this isn’t as urgent as you imagined? Stress could be a factor, and you might just have a bladder-control problem.”

  “I don’t think so, Dr. Kelly. I’m thirty-five years old. I usually know when I have to pee.”

  “All right, then. We’ll move on.” Dr. Kelly referred to his notes. “Let’s try and start from the very beginning again. Relax, take a deep breath, and picture yourself back in the home that you grew up in. Tell me what you see. Are your parents there?”

  Dahlia sat up abruptly and glanced at her watch. “Sorry, Doc. Time’s up.”

  There are people in this world who always seem to inspire a bit of fascination. No one quite knows what to make of them, but they know enough to leave them be and watch in wonder as they find their place in the world. And then there are those people who are simply strange. Not strange in a “We need to keep that one in a room behind the shed before he hurts somebody” kind of way but strange in a “Best to just leave that child alone before you find something wrong with you” kind of way.

  Percival Tweed fell into this category. From the moment he slipped out of his mother’s womb, his beingness perplexed everyone around him. He was an anomaly, a walking mystery of the universe, a peculiar contradiction of sorts—both black and white at the same time. It was said that his mama, Caldonia Tweed, was visiting with Aunt Baby’s Indian mother, Oceola Moon, the day she went into labor prematurely. Supposedly, as the story goes, she saw a haint in the stairwell of the funeral home winking at her, and as a result, the baby she carried in her womb didn’t have a chance in hell of being born normal. Her sheer terror on that day, people swore, plum scared the black straight off of Percival. After Percival was born, Caldonia Tweed was never quite the same again. But Percival, despite his statements to the contrary, became something of a legend.

  Back when Percival Tweed was a boy, some fifty-sixty-odd years ago, the white folk didn’t even fool around with him. Rumor had it that anyone who had ever tried to hurt Percival Tweed mysteriously ended up with a curious affliction of sorts. Once when Percival Tweed was fourteen, the O’Shannon boys tried to teach him a lesson for not jumping off the sidewalk quickly enough to let decent folk pass. Billy O’Shannon had pushed him then and threatened to string him up from the nearest magnolia tree. The next day, as sure as the sun rose, Billy O’Shannon lost all ten of his fingers in a meat press over at the sausage plant downtown. Each O’Shannon in that group on the sidewalk that day was struck with a painful calamity. Coincidence perhaps, some pondered, but nobody in five counties was willing to take any chances with the blond-haired black boy who lived behind the Negro funeral home.

  And that was a blessing because Percival Tweed never meant to hurt anyone. For a long time, he, too, believed he was some kind of freak, a boy put on the earth just so other people could exercise their eyeballs and flap their lips when they looked upon him. He was of average height, five feet eleven or so, and lean of build. His body was chiseled from years of manual labor, and his skin was so white that it was nearly translucent. His mother used to proclaim that the sun came up every morning just to try and brown him up some. The hue of his skin alone would have been enough to get tongues wagging, but God had blessed Percival Tweed with an eerie sixth sense and the most extraordinary canary yellow eyes anyone had ever seen. He had always been alone, and for the most part, he liked it that way. The only woman he’d ever wanted was the one he couldn’t have, so being alone suited him just fine.

  Percival Tweed arose and said his prayers on his knees like he’d done every morning of his
life. His mother had been a stickler for such things. Life was calmer, and he’d had no reason to complain for a while. He lived in a modest house on the outskirts of the Culpepper property and had been there for as long as he could remember. Old man Culpepper had invited him many times to move closer to the main house with the family, but he’d always declined. Percival Tweed knew he was peculiar, but he had no intention of seeing anything or anyone else peculiar up in that house. Looking in the mirror every morning was enough for him.

  He’d ventured into the Culpepper house once back in the spring of 1949, and that was the last time he’d ever stepped foot in that place. His mama always claimed that there were haints in that house, and Percival Tweed didn’t fool around with no haints. They’d already caused him enough trouble. He savored a slice of honey wheat bread baked with bourbon and molasses, grabbed his trademark wide-brimmed gray hat, and loaded up the truck. His work list would be posted on the back door of the funeral home. Oddly enough, he’d never had to check it. He’d always known exactly how many graves to dig on any given day. It was a gift. Percival Tweed was a man of many gifts.

  Aunt Baby watched him from the window upstairs in the corner room—the one no one went in anymore on account of the unexplained frigid temperature. It was cold, but then again it was always cold in a funeral parlor—cold from refrigeration or cold from all the spirits hovering around begging for attention. No matter what you told people, sometimes they just couldn’t get used to the obvious. Truth for the feebleminded was too exhausting. She pinned her long salt-and-pepper braids on top of her head, sat for a spell, and enjoyed the view.

  He was an unusual man, that Percival Tweed, but he intrigued her just the same—always had. They never spoke much, just managed to exchange pleasantries every now and then. She knew that he knew that she watched him, and she also knew that he liked it, counted on it to jump-start his day. Although he tried, he couldn’t fool her. Hell, nobody could. It didn’t matter much, though, because neither of them would ever attempt to initiate any contact. For some odd reason, they only seemed to like each other from a distance. Folks always said that Percival Tweed was too strange a fellow to be fooling around with, but Aunt Baby also knew folks had whispered the same nonsense about her since she was knee-high to a bullfrog. She pondered, What were the odds of having two bizarre people in one town who weren’t related?

  Decades had passed and they’d never had so much as a real conversation except for that one awful day. And after that, it didn’t seem like there was any more left to say. They had never really been in each other’s lives, but she found that she missed him like she’d miss a husband if she’d ever had one. Her life had always consisted of her family, her family’s business, and her back-porch remedies. Before she knew it, in the blink of an eye, she was a grown woman with no husband or children of her own. It didn’t bother her too much. She never thought she’d have children anyway. She had accepted the vacancy sign that had become permanently attached to her womb. And there was always somebody else or somebody else’s child who needed tending. When Dante came along out of the blue, thoughts of a husband that had been lingering in her imagination and casually invading her dreams vanished almost overnight. But still, even now, after all this time, when she looked at Percival, she was reminded of a life she could have had, a husband she would have loved, and a time that was long gone.

  Mercy had driven to NorthPark and back twice before she realized that she’d seen the black Jaguar parked out front next to Uncle Brother’s Lexus. She berated herself for being so gullible, so naïve, so utterly stupid. She had unwittingly been entertainment for Aunt Baby again. Right now, at this moment, she should be staring into the eyes of a man who loved her instead of driving around town like a maniac searching for a car that had been in front of her the whole time. She was disgusted with herself, and the three new red dresses she had charged from Nordstrom didn’t make her feel any less dim-witted.

  Being around Aunt Baby made her so jittery that she couldn’t complete the simplest of tasks without appearing like she suffered from Tourette’s syndrome. One minute she was perusing catalogs in her lavishly furnished bedroom, and the next she was twitching through the funeral parlor, most likely putting on a show for the dead along with the staff. Her face had become a sitcom, and much to her chagrin, TicTock had become her middle name. For the life of her, she couldn’t comprehend how one cantankerous old woman could have such an effect on her. Somehow, since entering this house, she had been reduced to an incomparable twit, someone who couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time, someone who didn’t know her ass from her elbow, someone who couldn’t control her own facial muscles without downing a shot of Cognac. This was not supposed to be her life. She had always been a reasonably intelligent girl. She could have made something of herself. She should have done something with her life instead of settling for a man who couldn’t love her and a house that would never be her home.

  The truth of her life was overwhelming. Who she was and what she had done settled into her bones and unfurled like cancer. She realized that she had no one to blame but herself. Her life was the way it was because of the choices she’d made. She had always been able to write her own ticket, and in doing so, she had invariably sent herself to hell. Her existence was less than desirable because, when she was sixteen years old, she had told her mama that she wanted to marry Lucius Culpepper. And like always, her parents had obliged her. She wished now that they hadn’t constantly given her everything she ever wanted. She wished that her parents had expected more of her. What teenager is allowed to decide her entire life? What the hell had she known at sixteen? Frankly, what the hell did she know now? All of her life, she had been told she was special, and she’d believed it until she married Lucius Culpepper. Now she felt trapped in a spiral of wrong decisions, and there was nothing she could do about it. She was being punished. She knew it.

  If only she could go back and make adult choices. If only she could undo the damage she had done so carelessly. If only … she could press rewind and relive that one day, all would be forgiven and she would have the life she deserved. But no, as usual, she had gotten precisely what she asked for, and the realization of that was almost more than she could bear. Defeated in her scarlet red Mercedes with her hands clenched tightly around the steering wheel, Mercy Lucille Blue flirted with a nervous breakdown. What if, after all this time, her parents had lied to her? Maybe she wasn’t so extraordinary after all. Maybe her life had been one big mistake from the very beginning.

  “Quit fussin’ over me now. I can figure out how to get on a damn train. I’m old; I’m not stupid.” Aunt Baby slapped Uncle Brother’s arm away as he tried to help her onboard.

  “Don’t you run back and tell that boy I’m leaving, hear. Let him find my note in his own time.”

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Mama?” Brother asked, shaking his head. “You know, some things need to be left unsaid. I think—”

  Aunt Baby sternly interrupted him. “Boy, I don’t recall asking you what you think. Hell, did I even ask you to drive me down here? Furthermore, did I ask you to cut your hair like that? You look like a damn chicken.”

  “No, Mama.” Brother sighed.

  “Well, then, don’t just stand there. Help me with my bags.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Brother.”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “You take care of Lucius while I’m gone.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Brother.”

  “You come with Lucius when it’s time to bring me home.”

  “All right,” Brother agreed, with a raised eyebrow.

  “And, Brother.”

  “Hmmmm.”

  “When you come to California, don’t let him bring TicTock. She’ll only make matters worse. You and I both know she likes to stir up a fresh batch of hell every chance she gets. I mean, what kind of woman buys over forty red dresses? One that’s not quite right in the head, that’s what kind. Jus
t a plain nutcase, if you ask me.”

  “Well, there’s a lot of that going around.”

  “Hush your mouth. You know that girl has a head chock-full of peanuts,” Aunt Baby whispered, stifling a giggle.

  “Aw, Mama, that is his wife. Maybe she’s just color-blind and can’t see any other color but red,” Brother added, trying desperately not to join in his mother’s laughter at the expense of his cousin’s wife.

  “Just hear what I say. Make sure somebody watches Mercy while y’all are gone or else the entire house will be looted, picked clean like a drumstick on New Year’s Day. Watch her now, son. Keep one eye on her at all times.”

  “Okay, Mama, okay. You’re about to miss the train now. Hurry up.”

  “Brother.”

  “Yes.”

  “I love you, son, you hear.”

  “I love you, too,” Brother responded gently, and embraced the only mother he had ever known.

  “And, Brother.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Did any bread come today?”

  “It’s Wednesday, Mama, and fresh loaves always come on Wednesdays. They have for as long as I can remember.”

  “All right, then. Oh, Brother.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Well, did you pack some in my bags?”

  “Of course.”

  “What kind is it this time?”

  “Does it really matter?”

  Aunt Baby raised her eyebrow, and Dante sighed before replying.

  “Some kind of sweet potato bread, I guess.”

  “I better get going, but listen to me. I know what I’m doing. Tell your cousin that I know what I’m doing. And, Brother.”