my hand. “How you doin’, how you doin’?” He grinned. His thick paw was sweaty and almost covered with hair. “So you the smart young’n I done heard so much about? I hope you stay for a few weeks. We gwine to slaughter two hogs next month.” He grinned again, snapping his suspenders. He had on a pair of jeans with patches on both knees and a blue-flannel shirt. There was a pipe sticking out of his shirt pocket.
“I’m sorry. I’m only staying a couple of days,” I apologized. I heard my aunt gasp. I turned to her with a weak smile. “I have to get back to my job. We’ve been real busy lately.”
“Maybe you can come back for Christmas,” Harry James suggested. “We gwine to put up a live tree and everything. I’m gwine to let you chop one down on Buddy Spool’s property.”
“When you get tired of that Erie, you oughta move up here so you can keep me and Harry James company since we ain’t got no kids,” Aunt Berneice mouthed, rubbing her husband’s shoulder and drooling at him like he was Mr. Universe.
“I’ll think about it,” I lied. I was ready to turn around and go back to the bus station on foot. It was time to leave Erie, but I didn’t want to move to New Jersey. By leaving Richland I had found what I was looking for in Erie, the real me. I was strong, independent, and no matter what I looked like, I was a beautiful person. The ghost of Mr. Boatwright would follow me no matter where I went even if I moved back to Richland. So that’s what I was going to do.
The problems that had sent me running to New Jersey kept me up most of that first night in Aunt Berneice’s house. When I got up the next morning, Harry James and Aunt Berneice had dressed and eaten breakfast. Harry James was stretched out on the couch. His spit can was on the floor in front of him, and he was already snoring by 9 A.M. Aunt Berneice fixed me a plate of grits and sausages and sat across from me at the table and watched me eat.
“Tell me all about that Erie,” she insisted. Between swallows, I gave her a vague picture of my life in Erie. She didn’t seem at all impressed with my job and the nice apartment I described, but she smiled when I told her about Levi. I only told her about our dinners, nights out, and how we spent our Sundays in church. “If he was all that, how come you let him go?” Aunt Berniece leaned across the table and shook her finger in my face. “Men like that hard to come by. I never thought I’d find a man like Harry James.”
“He…he got a job offer in Texas, and I didn’t want to go,” I lied.
Aunt Berneice shook her head and looked at me with pity. “Texas. That’s where your daddy run off to that time.”
I lost my appetite. It had been years since Muh’Dear mentioned my daddy, but I thought about him almost every day. I still missed him. I looked off sadly, chewing slowly and blinking my eyes hard so I wouldn’t cry. “I hope he’s happy in Texas,” I muttered. I truly meant it. No matter where my wayward daddy was, I hoped that he was having a good life.
“Oh he ain’t in Texas no more,” Aunt Berneice informed me. She got up to get a cup of coffee.
“Do you know where he is?” I asked, following her as she moved around the kitchen to get sugar and cream.
“He back in Florida with them half-breed kids that white woman left him with,” she said, returning to her seat.
“You’ve talked to him?”
“I talk to Frank all the time. He called to wish me happy birthday last week.”
“Where’s the white woman?” I said, clearing my throat and blinking hard. My aunt didn’t see the tears in my eyes.
“Only God knows. Her runnin’ off desertin’ them kids the way she did broke Frank down to a frazzle.” Aunt Berneice drank from her cup and shook her head at the same time.
“Now he knows how Muh’Dear and I felt when he left us,” I said nastily.
My aunt set her cup down and gave me a look of pity. “I wish you could see him now. He the most repentant man alive. That savage South can be such a jungle for Black