Walking to Beauty's, my face still stung where R. slapped me. But his words had stung me more. My Grand Tour was rivers: the Thames, the Seine, what do they call all those canals in Venice? What name did that water go by? What destinations were in that book, Murray's Infallible Handbook? Rivers and the lake at Como. Atlanta is a landlocked place, a rail terminus, really and only. If it becomes a great city, it will be one of the first not built on a river. I ain't seen a big body of water in a time, but I still have my memories. Something that I cherish so much cannot have been a joke.
I went in a party of some friends of R.'s, an unpaid but working companion. The kind that holds the chairs on deck, fetches games, takes the smallest slice of beef, eats in the cabin when there is no space at table, ate at table when I wasn't hungry when someone needed a companion. I saw paintings. In Rome I met a colored woman from the United States who lived there as a sculptor of marble. She carved marble fauns. She and those rivers were a revelation to me.
Today, I came up the back way and in the kitchen door. Beauty's unpowdered nose was inside a great big cup of coffee. I've seen folk go down to the river to get baptized and I've seen them get sprinkled. None ever seemed so washed as Beauty after her coffee. Each and every morning that old whore jumped fully into that big black cup of coffee, and when she stepped away from her morning meal, she was fully cleansed of the sins of the night.
She didn't wait for Sunday for communion and she didn't wait for the river to be baptized; she had baptism and communion right there in her kitchen every morning. When any of the girls woke themselves up to share breakfast with Beauty, they got communion too. Morning with Beauty was its own religion.
Beauty isn't young. Her face was painted white, and the hair on the top of her head was the same shade of burgundy as the velvet of her front room chairs. Shaped like an hourglass but built like a brick house, she counted the change right the first time. She had a son didn't live with her. She sent him away to school. I don't believe in that. Over the years I've tried to talk Beauty into bringing the boy back with her to live. But she wouldn't hear me. Anyhow, he's a man now.
I sat myself down in the chair beside her. There was an empty cup in front of me like she was expecting somebody. She poured coffee into it. I asked her what I should do 'bout going home. Beauty just grunted, but she was serving me, and that said something. I pulled in closer to the table. The cup tingled in my hands. Beauty took another sip of coffee. "One way of seeing it, when you got a bitch for a mother she should expect to die alone. Other is, blood is blood." It was my turn to grunt. I looked into her eyes and knew that she expected to die alone. And I knew that for all her hospitality to me, her absence from He, him, her son, maybe had earned that. This whore had no "heart of gold," but then again she didn't pretend to. She was no better than she should be, but she was as good as need be. And my need be great.
The hand that had itched to slap her was brushed by her hand serving me. I tried to remember Mama pouring me a cup of coffee. Nothing came. She asked me if I was afraid of going. I said yes. She shook her head. I'd never seen her pity me. Not when she bought me off the auction block, not when she had me serving for her. She said, "Sometimes the only way to stop being afraid of a thing is to let it happen."
Blood is blood. I tried to imagine Other's hand pouring coffee for me. I winced and hoped R.'s bastard was growing in my belly. Beauty reached out and lifted up my face with the knuckles of her bent fingers. "If he had the reason, he might marry you."
"I don't want to give him a reason," I lied.
Lying brings a nervous tickle to my throat. My throat started tickling, and I laughed. Dark brown liquid shot from my mouth onto Beauty. I gasped and coughed again. She pushed me away from the table and all her fine linens. "You gone straight crazy, took the Black Diamond Express. Makes no stops and arrives in hell early." I was trying to stop laughing. I was trying to remember Mammy serving me something, pouring one cup of coffee, but all I could remember was Mammy pouring coffee for Other, her fine white hands trembling as Mammy filled her cup. And Lady holding out the cool glass of fresh milk to me. I don't know what face I made. But Beauty got to looking kinda scared. "Whatever you're thinking about don't think about."
"Then let me pour the next cup of coffee," I said.