Without prejudice - By Andrew Rosenheim Page 0,105
she asked, though it was she who was wearing a thin wool coat, while he had on a ski parka, puffed with goose down. A frayed silk scarf covered her head, a cast-off from Merrill. Without her grey hair showing, she looked years younger – her face was still smooth-skinned.
‘It’s not exactly Mississippi weather,’ he said.
‘You tellin’ me.’ She pointed to the field. ‘Hard to believe that in three months kids going to be running around in T-shirts and shorts out there.’
‘Do you want to go get warm somewhere?’ There was a coffee shop inhabiting the Steinways corner spot now, only two blocks away.
‘No. I got to go downtown, see this man Gehringer some more. But I wanted to talk to you first.’
He waited, but she seemed in no hurry. He sensed a terrible sadness in her. She stared out again at Jackman Field. ‘You know, when I first came into your life you was a damaged little boy. I was so worried about you – and I thought, If I can show this boy the love he needs maybe he’ll be all right. I mean, I knew you would be cared for in all the other respects – your daddy wasn’t rich, but he had more money than I’d ever see. You’d always have all the food and clothes you’d ever need, and I knew you’d be going to a good school. What you didn’t have was a mama.’
She sighed. ‘Duval had a different kind of problem. He had a mama, but his mama was no good.’ She looked at Robert dispassionately, though he knew this must hurt to say – Aurelia was her daughter, after all. ‘So I needed to help him, too, even if I couldn’t provide those other things for him. When you were little and friends with Duval, I used to dream sometimes that maybe he could go to school with you. He’d be with you at your gym time, and over in the classrooms too. He’d get himself educated, that’s what I dreamed.’ Her voice suddenly lowered. ‘I always knew it wasn’t going to be a dream come true. He didn’t get much schooling, really, nothing that prepared him for a good life. And now it’s come to this.’
He didn’t know what to say. ‘There’s still hope, Vanetta.’
She pursed her lips and shook her head; for a moment, he thought she would start crying. He wanted to cheer her up. ‘You know, I used to wish you’d kidnap me, Vanetta.’ When she gave a laughing snort he added, ‘I used to dream you’d stick me and Duval in your car and take us down to Mississippi.’
She looked at him, disbelieving. ‘That’s not a dream, child, that’s a nightmare.’
‘But you told me about where you grew up. All the fruit and the corn and the pond at the farm.’
She was shaking her head.
‘Don’t you remember?’ He was almost pleading. ‘I used to play a trick on Duval, tell him that over the wall behind the Christian Science church there was a Secret Garden.’
‘I know you did. He asked me once if it was true. I said of course it was.’
‘Of course it wasn’t, you mean. It was just a little patch of dead ground. I shouldn’t have fooled him like that. But in my mind there was a Secret Garden, and that was your place in Mississippi.’
She sighed again. ‘Baby, I told you all the nice things – the watermelons, and the peaches and such – because you were just a little boy who needed something sunny and warm to think about. You wouldn’t expect me to say anything else, now would you? I don’t want to tell you what life was really like down there. The farm owner, how bad he cheated my daddy each fall, or the white men in town who used to stand around the general store, talking their bullshit to each other. They’d call out to me – I couldn’t have been more than ten, eleven years old – askin’ things that make me blush just thinking about them. The white boys, they’d spit on the sidewalk where Alvin was about to step, just to let him know where he belonged.’ She stopped and exhaled, her breath hanging like smoke in the cold air. ‘Sometimes it seemed if a white person was nice to you, it was either ’cause they wanted something or it was an accident. Chicago ain’t been no picnic,’ she said. ‘But life down there was hell.’