Belladonna Jackson Easterday

Belladonna Jackson Easterday

Sitting here insulted by questions, she could think only how she hated to return to an empty house.  The house she lived in as a girl was never empty.  Even on Sundays, when they all went off to worship, there was always an aunt with the vapors or a baby with an earache or made fussy by colic, and the one who stayed behind to soothe with heat compresses or vinegar rubs.  And when they returned, the house greeted them.  It was a well-lived-in house.

The smell of hominess always occupied it.  Yeasty, of rising loaves.  Of the burnt insides of baking pans from the morning’s quickbread or cat’s heads.  Of turpentine and lye soap and Ajax.  And maybe, on a morning when Grandma was extra cheerful, cinnamon.  She knew in the crevices where to sniff for lavender and witch hazel.  The lingering smell of Sunday’s pot roast or gospel bird never cleared fully out until late Saturday afternoon.  And, of course, there was always that delicious smell of linens and sheets drying on the line.

There were sounds in that house, and if she thought about it enough, the lack of those sounds now would make her cry.  The rocking of Grandpa in his favorite rocker.  The fussing of women busy with supper before Wednesday night’s prayer meeting.  And, in spite of the distant warning of the evil they were known to hold, the not-so-secretive shuffling and slapping down of a deck of cards, whose sophisticated sound titillated her beyond belief.  Grandma didn’t mind, but it would mean a whipping from Daddy who had, at midlife, decided he would turn outwardly holy. 

There was the sound of night, when it was spring, before summer came and turned everything into a gummy melting state that made her think of drowning in a pool of molasses.  Caught, as if in quicksand, she imagined the struggle to breathe as molasses was, finally, drawn into the lungs.  But the sound of night stayed with her, and she remembered the look of the stars in the pre-summer sky.  Then, it was as if the world stood still just for her.  She knew the moon followed her, and so did the sun.  Trees danced because she silently commanded them to do so.  And the wind never held its tongue; it sung whatever was on its mind.

But now, she thought only about supper.  Not about eating it.  Not even about what to prepare or how.  But the need to do something, to do something well, something that could be normal and held onto, came upon her so sharply and piercingly that she scratched incessantly at her elbow just as she had since she was a child.  She needed something today that held the promise of a beginning, a middle, and an ending.  Making supper for Wednesday night would be her prayer which, God help her, she did a lot of these days.  Or maybe not.  She talked to God.  She even listened.  But when she talked, she gave an earful.  There was much to say.  On her knees or upright shaking her fist and having an accounting with the Almighty.  She waited in silence for the answers, for the soothing words, or even the chastising ones if they would unstick her from this this this thing called life. 

There was much to listen for.  And much to say.

“And you do have your own transportation?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t, ummm, share it or

“No.  I have a car.”

“And a valid

“And a valid license.  Here are the photocopies of my license and my DMV printout.”

“Your name is pretty.”

“Thank you.”

“I mean both of them.  Your first and your last.”

Do you ask everyone these questions or just me?

“Are you

“My husband’s father was part Mohave with a little Pomo.”

They are my names

“I’d like to ask you why you

“I was happy running the home, but I left to raise my children.”

Put a black woman in charge of anything and they find ways, they will find ways to bring her down

“Well, this position is a little beneath your capa

Won’t be the first time “I’m just looking to get back into the workforce.  Slowly.  My children are older.”

“You know the position only pays

“Yes, I know what it pays.  That’ll be just fine.”  Dear God, per hour, times 8, 40, 42 a day, 5 days, 2, 210 per week, 4 weeks, 8, 840 a month, minus taxes, 20, do 20 per cent, one, 168, 670, roughly.  God.  Dear God.  Well, that’s part of the mortgage.

From the unpublished novel The Zodiac House (1999)

Dan Davis © 2009

~ by Dan Davis on 09.29.09.