The Future Has a Past Read online

  “Those policemen said . . . they said they went there to make love, make sex. My poor friendly daughter. Oh Lord. Make love. She loved love . . . so she didn’t know he didn’t have any for her. They told me, the policeman say he couldn’t enjoy making . . . sex with someone who was alive; they had to be dead. Dead! And, so, that man who don’t know nothin bout no love killed my baby. Strangled her! Strangled my child who I love. She was so pretty. He strangled her and kept her there five days . . . dead . . . just usin her body. Oh! Lord! Usin her body without her knowing it. Then, the people in the other rooms smelled something . . . and reported it and that’s when he left . . . In the night.”

  There were no words, there still are no words to express my horror of such a thing being in life; no words to say to this poor woman because I know she was picturing it, would be picturing it for the rest of her life. I led her around the people gaping at her, straining to hear her words. I led her to the limousine the mortician was pointing at and helped her get in.

  I had not planned to go to the cemetery; so much sorrow when one is lowered down into a grave. I had just known Mr. Shaky would be there. But, as I tried to back out of the limousine the mortician whispered to me that I might stay with her; she needed help from someone who cared for her. I whispered back, “Where is her husband, Mr. Shaky?” The answer was he had suffered a mild heart attack when he heard of his daughter’s death and was in the hospital. Mrs. Shaky didn’t have anyone else. So I went to the cemetery in the car with Mrs. Shaky and just let her talk herself out.

  And she did talk. “They broke the door down the next day, the sixth day, and that’s when they found her.” She reached her hands toward the hearse driving in front of us, saying, “Oh, Lord. Jesus. He killed my baby . . . not for no love . . . just for sex.”

  When the end of the funeral was over and we drove Mrs. Shaky to her house, her husband, Mr. Shaky, bent over a little from weakness, came out of the house to meet her and took her from my arms. He didn’t say a word, just patted her back, put an arm around her and led her, the two of them leaning on each other, back into their home.

  I stood there watching until their door closed, then got into the limousine for the ride back to my car. Ahhh, my heart was full of heavy sorrow like a huge weight.

  When we reached the funeral home Carla was there with her children; late. She came over to me and said, “Well . . . she gone.”

  “Yes, she is gone.”

  Carla shook her head and said, “I tole her bout goin off with people. Now, look! She done got killed. She liked that lovin; but you can’t fool with some people. That sure is a shame!”

  I turned to her, already tired of pain, and I didn’t mean to be mean, but, I had to say it. “Yes, she got killed. She is dead. But you like ‘that lovin’ yourself. She got killed, but you got five children by different men while you were looking for love! Why didn’t some one of them love you enough to marry you and stay? Your life ain’t living either.”

  “What you talkin bout? What you got? We all women. We all need some love! You like love your own self!”

  I had to answer, and I heard my mama’s voice, “Yeah, but I waited long enough to know he loved me before I let him use me up! Everybody might want to screw you, but not everybody wants to stay and marry you if you love em! What you feel isn’t all there is to it! What he feels is important too! Now you got babies and the men got some nooky and they probably done forgot all about your stuff and maybe the babies, too!” I hated to sound so righteous, but I wasn’t being righteous, I was trying to use some sense in what I said. I didn’t want to hurt her, but I knew the men in her life had.

  As I started moving away toward my car I hollered to Carla, “You need to read Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan; it’s actually about many women in the world who want love. You don’t have to settle for just ANYthing! Life can get better!”

  I said to her as I stepped into my car, “I got a man and two babies who belong to him. I got a life I choose. Didn’t nobody leave me with it or make me take it.”

  As I drove home I was thoughtful about life. I thought about my friend, Lorene. All her life she was so proud, glad to have a vagina. People, men, used it, might have abused it. Must have. I know they did. She abused it herself. She never did seem interested in anything else, but “love” or sex. Far as I know, she was never anything BUT a vagina to most of the men in her life. And because she never developed anything else in her life, in herself, to wrap that vagina in . . . That’s all she was. A vagina. And that vagina was so helpless that even when she was dead it was still being used. And by someone who could do anything they wanted to do with it. And still not love her. A vagina needs a brain to control what happens to it. Be responsible for it! Hopefully with the brain it was born with at the top of your body.

  I thank God and my mama for any sense I have in knowing I am more than just a vagina. There is more to life. Your vagina, my vagina, is very, very important to me, but it is not my whole life or your whole self. Love does make the world go round, sure does. But, when sex makes your world go round; look out! And when some women use it to make money off it, just let some years go by and you are gonna have to spend most all of the money you no longer have trying to get your behind back to some kind of useful, healthy shape. If you can. Everything wears and tears if you don’t take care of it. My mama told me and I believe her.

  See? People, men and women, come into your life with free pretty words and actions and they ain’t there except to steal somebody’s happiness. A liar is a thief who will steal from anybody. And a liar ain’t but a second away from a physical abuser and a murderer. Lorene is dead because that man stole her life. Sure did. Lord, bless her. But, did she give it to him? Her choice, wasn’t it? Not to die, but she put herself out there. Poor Heleva Lorene.

  And time won’t wait for you to catch up and learn. You have to love your own heart and body! Love is LOVE, and LOVE protects what or who it LOVES. Believe me. If somebody is not there to HELP you, what else are they there for? Answer me, please.

  Well, I was talking to myself, but I was practicing for my children. Boys have to be careful too.

  I brushed all that off my mind and new thoughts came into it. I rushed home and picked up my babies and the cake I had made earlier to take to the Shakys’ house. I headed straight there. I meant to give Mrs. Shaky some part-time grandchildren. She might not love them as much as she would have loved her own from Lorene, but she was full of love for just “youngsters,” as she would say.

  I wasn’t trying to pay her back for the many times she fed me when we were poor and I was growing up. I wanted to give her back some of the love she used to put in those sandwiches and cookies and everything else she gave to me. And others. Cause love does make the world go round. Sure does.

  Poor Heleva Lorene Shaky.

  A Filet of Soul

  Part I

  Life is so big, so big . . . so huge, with so many things in it sometimes you wonder why some people get so little out of it and others find a way to get so much. But, then, I reads a lot and I read where your character is your destiny. Well, that means that the life that makes up that character is just too downright important not to think about.

  But, is it something else, too? Something born inside you, that shapes and sifts the things that happen to you when you are young? Things that shape your thoughts about life and how you reacts to it? Even your dreams? Your choices? Now, I have seen a lot of things in my life and I know most everybody has a dream to love somebody and be loved by that somebody in return. That may go to character too! Like, how lonely are you? How much in need are you? After your character is born and grown, how slim or how great are your chances? For happiness?

  Luella cried last night. Again.

  This town is a little, ole place, I reckon like a many another little ole town in the world. A few well-off, maybe wealthy rich folks and a heap of poor folks. The people who has the most live on one side of town and us, we live over on this side
of town. They white, we black.

  But we have a clean little town on these four or five blocks; not all of it, but most of it. Cause some folks you can’t teach em nothing much; but that kind live on both sides of town.

  Lining our streets we have great big ole tall, beautiful trees. Some planted by our grandfolks or our parents, so they old, old and big and wide and beautiful. They set off the streets with the little, mostly wood houses set back from the street. And peoples here take good care of their lawns and all. Plant flowers and such.

  But it seems like it’s a old folks town. Ain’t too much to do after your day’s work but eat and sit out on the porch til you go to bed. Young people leave here bout soon as they get out’a school. Going somewhere else to college or something, or just going somewhere else, period.

  I still live in my parents’ home, rest they souls, they dead now, both of em. Me and my husband took care our parents til they died. I married after I graduated school. Had children; they grown and gone now too. Husband dead; worked hisself to death. Sometimes I ask myself: For what?

  Anyway, I’m alone now. Yes, sir. And I get lonely . . . sometime . . . but I’m so glad not to have nothing to do but what I want to do that I just keep to myself and mind my own business. I ain’t old yet so I work two days a week, sometimes only one; just depends how I feel.

  See, it’s too hot here to get too busy at anything in the summertime. Even the flies and the mosquitoes buzz a minute, then sit and rest a couple of times on their way to bite something. It’s that hot! Yes, mam! I work my yard, food and flowers, in the evenings or early mornings. Once that sun near bout hit the middle of the sky, I’m gone on in and pulling my shades down. And in the winter it’s too cold to think of bein lonely when you trying to keep that wood stacked outside and in the house and finding ways to keep from going outside. Sides, I read books. I always did love books. They keep my mind full.

  My neighbor Luella cried last night. Again.

  See, some of these little houses sit mighty close together and sometime you be in your neighbor’s house without trying to be. Luella’s family house sits on the corner of Hope Street and Wayward Lane, and my house is right next to it on Hope Street. Her other neighbor is Mattie, she on Wayward Lane. My house has a long backyard, so my land runs the length of Luella’s and Mattie’s. All these houses started out belonging to our parents. Now . . . I am not a nosy person, but I can get interested sometime. A little fence and a thin wall . . . things carry.

  Luella cried last night. Again.

  Luella’s mother, Sedalia, was in the same class in school with me and Mattie. She was a nice girl who could have been fast; if you know what I mean. Cause she was cute and the boys teased her a lot. She was a thin, nervous-type girl, always watching everything and everybody but her books. I loved books, but Sedalia seemed to like boys more, leastways one or two. She was poor, a poor family, but we was all poor. Don’t care what you say though, she washed them two dresses she had so they was clean every day she came to school cept one or two times her daddy had beat her so bad she could hardly move. But she made it to school in a dress, then torn and mended by unlearned hands, but clean. I magine she rather be at school than at home no matter which way she had to come.

  Oh, she worked too, from the earliest days, helping her mother wash clothes for others. Her mother was a thin, nervous woman, too. Sickly. Her father looked strong, but he drank; a lot. Sedalia was their only child cause they just didn’t seem to be able to make any more children. Prob’ly was a good thing.

  Then Sedalia started doing other folks’ clothes on her own. Was always two or three big tin tubs half full of clothes sitting out back of the house. And she takin care of babies or the neighbors, whenever she could, cause they poor too. Her mama took the money, had to, cause her daddy didn’t provide. But, enough of that, cause I done had enough of sad songs. Most everybody got one to sing.

  But, now, I members just plain as day, we were in our last month of school and everybody was getting ready for the prom, such as it was. But, Sedalia, she knew she wasn’t going because she had no prom clothes to wear. Nobody had asked her to go with them anyway. Scared to, I guess, scared of her papa.

  The night of the prom Sedalia came anyway, still in one of her mended dresses. But, she didn’t come in the brightly lighted, decorated gym where the prom was held, she stood outside, watching everybody else go in. When it seemed everyone was in, she sat on the grass, just looking at the building, listening to the blaring music, I guess.

  Some of the boy-men, after a few stolen drinks of somebody’s cheap wine, hatched a trick-plan to send a fellow out to play a little joke on Sedalia and ask her to dance on the grass. One of the boys she had liked and stared at all the time while he was with other girls at school volunteered to go do it. I’m shamed not one of us girls spoke up to shame them from doing it, I guess we wanted to laugh too. Thought it was all in fun and I even thought she might like to dance at her prom even if it was outside on the grass. It must take common sense to be a decent person, cause none of us had any.

  That boy, Wiley, went out there and a flustered, needy, pitiful Sedalia smiled up at him and when he held out his hand, she reached for it. He was, maybe, supposed to run off then, but he didn’t. Maybe cause of the tears in her eyes, but he didn’t run off, he danced with her. Slowly, even though the music was a swing dance. He must have made her very happy because hope rose in her little wrung-out heart and when he stayed to dance a second time, she clung to him, even as he danced her across the green grass to the darkened trees, into the black of the night.

  We few who had watched, finally lost interest when we couldn’t see them no more and we went back to our own heartthrobs and dancing. I was with my future husband, chile.

  When Wiley finally came back in, a little rumpled with grass sticking to his clothes a bit, he was smiling. A few people gathered round him to hear and laugh. He sure could talk, that boy could. He had us laughing so hard, til I realized Sedalia was still out there by herself and I got sad for her. I went to look out the window to see if she had enjoyed being part of the prom anyway, but didn’t see her anywhere; she was gone and I could only see the blackness of the night off up under them trees.

  Then . . . graduation was over. Sedalia didn’t attend, but I thought it might be because of a graduation dress. In all that flurry of school ending and life, at last, beginning, I forgot about her because soon I was sayin good-bye to my fiancé, my beau, and going off to that junior college my folks had saved so hard for.

  When I came home for vacation, I saw Sedalia. I saw her walking home from the big market in our area, owned by a white man. Lord, she was big with child. I ran up to her, like a fool, asked her, “Sedalia! When did you get married? Did you marry Wiley?”

  Sedalia stopped and shifted her brown paper bags and just looked at me. Hard. With angry, hurt eyes. She never answered me. She just turned and continued on her, now weighted, uncomfortable way.

  I learned Sedalia had her baby at home. A girlbaby. That was Luella. Her mother helped her with the cord cutting and such, while her father cussed her out. Sedalia gave birth as she cried. Wiley didn’t show up to see his baby girl. Never. When Sedalia got up from there she just went right on outside and began her life of bending over them tin tubs washing clothes for a living for her and her baby, Luella. By herself. I heard Wiley left town bout that time.

  Now Mattie . . . Mattie was fast as they come. She was a nice girl, but a fast girl too! She was cute as a button and the boys surely liked her and she liked them back. I think she been married two or three times now. Got about five kids; three of her own, grown and gone out the house now (cept off and on), and two grandchildren. But, she don’t have no real man. Yes, she’s alone now. Raising them children for her daughters. Oh, she has a man-friend, but he don’t stay there much. He says it’s too many children and too much noise for him. Mattie had plenty brothers and sisters, a big family. But Mattie done run them all away now, cause she needs that house. T
hey all still kinda friends, but Mattie done let them know there ain’t no room in that house for them. They tried to sell it a few times since the parents died, but Mattie goes down to that city hall and cry and slobber and yell all over them white folks and they want her to leave so bad, they give her her way.

  Anyway, two years of junior college was enough for me. I was closer than ever with my fiancé-beau and it seemed like I was pregnant, so we got married. He had a decent job and I got a job as an assistant teacher of kindergarten. We moved in with my parents cause I’m an only child myself and I didn’t want to leave my mama no how! It’s what people do in this little town anyway, cause we need to put our money together to keep the family going and keep the taxes and upkeep on the house they done sacrificed for already. You know, family.

  As I be going to work or something, I would see Sedalia going out with baskets of washed and pressed clothes and coming in with bags of dirty clothes. I had Saturday and Sunday and holidays off; she didn’t, except for church on Sundays. That preacher kept her coming to atone for her “sins.” But, she would have gone anyway. She told me often, “God is the only friend I have, sides my mama, sometimes.”

  Her mother still tried to work, but she was tired and she was sick. Then she began to drink a bit herself; weary and disgusted I guess.

  Then Sedalia’s father died. He got a pauper’s funeral because they used the little insurance money for a down payment on that house they had been renting that was already falling down.

  The years continued to be hard years, passing slowly, for them. Then when Luella was about seven years old, Sedalia’s mother died. Sedalia did use the little insurance money to bury her mother as best she could. It was a decent funeral and, Oh! how Sedalia held on to that little wooden coffin her mother was in. Seemed she hadn’t held on to her mother enough when she was alive cause they was too busy surviving, but, to me? . . . There is always, always, time to take hold of the ones you love! Make yourself think about them! Do it! Fore it’s too late!