A Kind of Freedom. Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

Ruby grinning then, the first genuine smile the girl had had all morning.

      Evelyn didn’t leave the house the rest of the day; she just waited for Daddy to get word, act on it, but it never happened. Even before dinner when it was just the two of them in the kitchen, and she gathered the silverware to set the table, and he prepared a whiskey straight, he just went on about the patient he’d seen. “Miss Sylvia still hasn’t dropped that baby. I told her husband to walk her up and down Napoleon. That little thing would be out by the morning, but these women don’t listen. You’d think they were the ones who spent the eight years in school. I should take off my stethoscope when I walk in their houses, pass it over, let them listen to my heart beat. I told her, if she goes any longer, she’s going to be delivering at Charity, and she’d have better luck giving birth in a manger than in the Negro ward of a hospital.”

      Evelyn nodded and smiled, waiting for him to approach the real transgression. Halfway through dinner, when he and Mother had gone on and on about Mardi Gras preparations, the debutante receptions, soprano recitals, and whist parties; when Ruby pontificated over who would be riding with Zulu this year, how early she’d need to reach North Claiborne to catch the Indians, why the Skeleton Men frightened her; when Mother added that the Million-Dollar Baby dolls were scandalous and Daddy smirked and noted they were just costumes after all, Evelyn realized he didn’t know. And she stared at her mother as if just noticing a subtle feature in the older woman’s face that had transformed her into a different person altogether.

      Without her daddy’s interference, Evelyn and Renard spent their free days together. They’d meet at the Sweet Tooth for ice cream and giggle at the owner of the store, who would scoop the ice cream up, toss it in the air, then catch it with a cone. After paying, they’d drift outside to walk, past the women haggling with the butchers over turkey necks and kids gaping at the posters outside the Circle Theater. They didn’t speak at first—the bustling environment seemed to grant permission to their silence—but finally after a few days of the same, Renard’s voice inched out in a cracked whisper.

      “How was your treat?”

      “Delicious,” Evelyn said, so eager to engage with him the word shot out. She actually hadn’t gone inside the Sweet Tooth before, though she’d stood on that street for years because it tempted Ruby to see someone eating something she wanted but couldn’t have. He nodded at her answer and put his head back down.

      “How was yours?” Evelyn asked as sweet as her double chocolate malt ball shake.

      “The best I ever had. Andrew’s mama makes shakes all the time. Don’t tell Andrew, but I think this one was better.”

      The rest of their conversation seemed to pour out—first about their studies, then about what time they would head to the parades, and finally about the disparate versions of the stories Andrew and Ruby had relayed about their first date.

      “I heard they didn’t have the best time. Don’t tell him I told you, but I guess they ran into another woman, and my sister felt like he talked to her too long.”

      Renard chuckled. “Yeah, that’s my friend for you. He knows just about everybody in the city. Man or woman. And he doesn’t just leave it at a simple hello, he wants to know how their mama is, how their mama’s mama is, their brothers and sisters. He gets a full report on each one. That girl was probably from a big family, that’s all.”

      “That’s what I told her, that he didn’t mean any disrespect.”

      “No, he’s the kindest man I know. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. All his people are like that. When my mama passed, they didn’t have to take me in. They certainly didn’t have to pay my way. Andrew’s mama lost two of her sons; she has her own grief to tend to.”

      “To the war?”

      “No, tuberculosis; there aren’t too many Negroes fighting in the war.”

      “But Miss Georgia’s son is there.”

      “He may be there, but odds are he’s not holding a gun.”

      Evelyn lowered her eyes. “Oh.” She wanted to change the subject; the war was tragic in the way slavery was; it hadn’t affected her, and she thought talking about it might invite it in. “Well, at least Andrew’s mama still has him,” she said.

      He nodded, then went on. “My mama was just as sweet as Andrew’s, you know. I never met her, but they tell me that. They tell me she was beautiful. She was a twin.” He looked up in the sky, talking out of the side of his mouth. “Jet-black hair down her back, they say. Beautiful woman.” Then he jerked back into the conversation as if he were coming to. “What about yours?”

      “My—?” Evelyn asked, confused.

      “Your mama?”

      She shrugged. “She’s stunning,” she said. “She’s the classiest woman I ever met.”

      “What’s it like, having her? That probably sounds crazy, but I always wondered . . .”

      Evelyn didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want to sound ungrateful. She knew her mother loved her—there had been the time Ruby convinced Evelyn to swallow a dollar piece to make it multiply, and Evelyn had been rushed to Flint-Goodrich for the night. Her mother couldn’t be comforted, sobbing beside her bedside. Evelyn had heard her as she came to, and in those seconds she thought maybe there was a blessing inside that dollar, some voodoo magic that might open her mother’s heart, bind her to her, but after Evelyn was discharged, it was more of the same. Nothing Evelyn said came out right; nothing she did could warrant the woman’s approval.

      “We’re not so close,” she said. “I guess I’m more of a daddy’s girl.”

      “That’s too bad,” Renard said.

      “It’s not so bad,” Evelyn said. “I shouldn’t complain about it. You lost your mama, and I’m complaining about one who corrects me too much,” she tried to laugh.

      “Naw.” Renard shook his head. “Don’t say that. There’s all different types of ways to leave somebody. Maybe it’s sadder that she’s there, and she just feels far away.”

      From then on, Evelyn woke up each day with a renewed tolerance for the world; the feeling she’d been searching for her whole life had been missing because she hadn’t met Renard, and now that he was here, she could grasp the higher octave of joy her solitude precluded.

      Still, she made him say good-bye to her two blocks from their house and bribed Brother, who had caught them snuggling, with all the hog head cheese he could stomach.

      One morning Daddy walked into the kitchen while she whistled.

      “You’ve been in a mighty good mood lately, Evie.”

      She turned to him, startled into silence. “I have?” she asked finally. “I didn’t mean to be.”

      “No? What’s causing you to be so happy beyond your control?” He sat down, perched one leg atop the other, and smiled.

      Brother walked in just then, and she hurried to dish his snack before he could answer Daddy for her.

      “Extra mayonnaise,” Brother grinned.

      Her daddy glanced from Brother to her, his eyes narrowing. “I’ll take a sandwich too,” Daddy said.

      “Yes, sir.” Evelyn spread twice as much meat on the Wonder Bread as normal and added an extra teaspoon of mayonnaise too. She served her daddy first and shot Brother a pleading look to compensate for it. Mother had made lemonade, and she poured each of them a tall cool glass.

      “You don’t want one?” Daddy asked, a dollop of the soft meat on his lip.

      She shook her head, standing at the edge of the counter, waiting.

      When Daddy finished, he let out a huge belch he would have never delivered if Mother were there and finished off his lemonade. He pulled a toothpick from a jar in the center of the table and plucked the fat