I'll be late down to supper now. But R. say the Congressman will be later. I hope Mrs. Dred larded the turkey enough so the meat won't be dry with long cooking. Of all our peculiar customs, I find it strange that we denizens of the Southland don't have a taste for cool food—even in August. I told her to wrap the turkey in bacon before cooking, but she knows I don't like to serve the turkey with the bacon on it, so I suspect the bacon is someone's dinner and not on the turkey at all, and I can't be angry. Everybody needs to eat.
R. came into the room and led me to the bed. He lay me down upon it. And undressed me as if I was a child. He sat down beside me. He kissed my forehead and my lips. Ran his hand across my belly. His hand just hovered over the curly dark separating my thighs. When he looked at me this way, I knew he wouldn't love me. Wouldn't touch me. Wouldn't take me.
I still stir his mind, but I can no longer for sure stir his body. He is still beautiful. Men seem to start glowing with years. I wonder if they shine with the invisible candles that light up good leather when it ages. He wears his wealth on his face. Life has carved a leanness into the bones of my man that the years of plenty and the years of excess, drink and food, do not blight—completely.
Light in August. I used to be scared I would have a baby. Now I am scared I will not. My waist is narrow as a virgin's, and my stomach is babyless flat, my breast babyless high. I like to think I wear my years lightly. Virgins go dry and age quickly into brittle spinsters. Women who are touched by many different men become shopworn angels. You can see the smudges of bourbon breath mottling their eyes. Mothers grow flaccid, rich in baby love, each baby taking some of the mother's beauty as if the baby knows it needs to protect its babyself by making Mama less kiss-daddy pretty. Each baby knows the baby to come takes something away from the baby in arms, so little Jenny and little Carrie cry in the night just when Daddy's rising. They gray Mama's hair and suck the fullness out of her breast. Filling her heart with such love, she don't need to look in the mirror to see who she is. I learned all that at Beauty's. What the babies take away, the girls paint back on.
Me, I'm looking in the mirror, still. The mirror on the wall and the mirror in his eyes. I see Beauty grow blowsy; I see Other grow wider with the laying of three men and the birthing of three babies. Me—I've only had one man and no babies, and so my skin is not etched like marble with the pale wiggling seams where life stretched forth to cover life—but I am greedy for weight, the weight of life growing within me, the relief the old cow knows when she delivers in July and is light in August.
"Do you ever think about marrying me?" he asks.
"No."
"I'm thinking about marrying you."
I sit up on the bed. I don't look at him. It's time to get my dress on. I smell dinner ready in the kitchen. I wonder if Cook did lard the turkey. R. kisses me again on the forehead. For the first time in a long time, I wonder how much I remind him of Other and how much in his eyes I resemble their child. He outlines the curve of my eyebrow, and I know he is thinking of them.
I had to get this down. But now I have to dress. I will put on the red gown and the large gold hoops in my ears. I had intended to choose a more subdued dress, but I feel, after R.'s declaration, it will be amusing to play with his notion of who I am and watch him squirm. He's playing with me. I will not play in the shadow of Other.