THE NEXT MORNING, LEE PUT HER MAKEUP ON EXTRA HEAVY so the bruise wouldn’t show.
She had a new yellow spring dress to wear to church, and some panty hose, her first pair, which she lifted from the flat box with a simmer of anticipation. The hosiery seemed light as air in her hand. How could they survive the wearing?
Panty hose: two garments in one. Naked, she sat down on the dresser bench to pull on the hose. Up the fine mesh glided, past her ankles, calves, knees. Then she stood to stretch and tug the hose carefully to her waist. Now the panty hose covered her from toe to waist—she liked that. Compacting and constricting her flesh, their sheer power girdled her entire lower body. Across her thighs, the hose reflected the May morning sunlight with a fierce shine, in their effort to hold her.
Naked down to her waist, her breasts loose and soft, she bent her knees and took a few steps in her new panty hose. Almost like a pony, almost like prancing, first one, then the other, she lifted her knees, then placed her stockinged feet back on the floor. How clean and protected her feet felt against the uncarpeted boards. The panty hose covered her like another skin, protected her all the way up to the waistband.
Next came her brassiere. Cupping her breasts, the brassiere lifted her, held her breasts higher. Then her old slip, dingy, a disgrace. The box lid said they were panty hose, yet maybe she should take them off and put on some real panties underneath? But all that was hidden—who’d know? She lifted the new dress from the bed and let it slide down her body.
In that yellow dress—she fastened the narrow, matching belt on a tight notch—she looked like a canary bird and felt good enough to sing. She loved to sing at church. “Love lifted me. Love lifted even me.” That phrase (“even me”), oh, she always put her singing soul into that. With more than her voice, she caressed the phrase, humbly and tenderly.
The sermon title would be “Be Ye Kind,” and Ryder was going with her. Her mama was bringing her kids, who had spent the night over there. Be ye kind. Her mama had always been kind to her, even if Pa was something else. Her three would look so nice, and she wouldn’t have had to get them ready. Bobby almost ten, getting big, his hair combed with water.
While she combed her own hair (she wished she had put on underpants first but she’d go ahead to church without them this time), Lee recited the rest of the verse, her favorite: “Be ye kind, one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another.” That was her part, the forgiving—first Ryder, and way back, Pa. She could forgive just about anybody on a May morning with a new dress.
She did it wholeheartedly. She sat down at the dresser and put her little yellow hat on with the veil just coming over her forehead and eyes. At first she’d wished the veil was yellow, too, instead of black, but now her dark brown eyes appeared mysterious in the mirror as she looked out from the wide-spaced black netting of the veil.
The panty hose didn’t like to bend for sitting. As she sat at the dresser she could feel the elastic at the waist dipping down in the back, slipping with the strain of encasing half her body. If they were going to do that at church, she might have to go in a bathroom stall and tug them up. The panty hose had come in the mail marked “Trial Sample” in a box so shallow it was hardly a box. And there had been a market survey sheet. They wanted her opinion!
She didn’t like that little gaping at the small of her back—maybe she’d say that. But maybe then they would never send a sample again. She concentrated on positioning her yellow hat to just the right angle of tilt, toward the front.
Ryder stood behind her in the circle mirror and adjusted his tie. Like a big portrait picture: them in the mirror circle above the dresser. Could have been painted by Norman Rockwell on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. Title: “Almost Ready for Church.” If Norman Rockwell did paint them, he wouldn’t notice the bruise under the makeup. With her best smile, she looked up at her husband. He put his hand on her shoulder.
Ryder had fair hair, rather skimpy really, but his once-broken nose was always interesting to look at. His face was scrubbed pink, and he reminded Lee of a cowboy, with his nice high cheekbones. His eyes were a little narrow and slitty, though. And his teeth, yellow with smoke, were going, but they didn’t show in the mirror picture.
“See,” he said. “Done you good.” And he turned and swaggered into the living room.
While she watched his back in the mirror, bitter bile rose from her stomach to her throat. He shouldn’t of reminded her. Forget and forgive. You got to forget to forgive. He put a blight on a new day.
She made the ugly bile stop before it came into her mouth. Swallowed it down. The stomach fluid surprised her. Although it had never happened to her before, she recognized that vile fluid invading her throat.
This was her true feeling for her husband, and she knew it. When the mirror no longer held his image, she mouthed words. Not a sound:
“I hate you.”
She liked to see her mouth working the words. How her lips and tongue shaped them. Her mouth started wide and got more narrow with each silent word: I hate you. She narrowed her eyes so they were slitty and mean.
She told herself more, just the shape of it, not even the quietest whisper: “I’ll never hate anybody as much as I hate you.” What a long, secret sentence he couldn’t hear except for little pops of her lips. The pops were like code.
She reached for her compact, swiped the pressed powder with the puff, and gently applied more powder on her cheekbone.
LATER, IN CHURCH, when they were singing “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” when she glanced at Ryder, she hated him again and added contempt to her hatred—the way he belted out the song like he owned it: “marching as to war.”
Him? War? No. He just liked to ambush innocent niggers waiting for the bus and all his buddies with him. His rage at niggers controlled him. He didn’t even run his own life.
Once he had said, Only job a nigger’s good for is wiping the street with his tongue, and then I wouldn’t step on it. And that was nothing but nasty talk. She knew it was nasty and there wasn’t any need to be nasty that way.
Truth was, only person he dared to beat up by himself was his little wife—somebody could say that of him, and it would be true. Only person he dared to beat by himself was her.
“ ‘Rise up, O Men of God’ ”—she sang the new hymn just as loudly as he did. Pity was, that’s what he believed about himself, that he was the right hand of God. “ ‘Have done with lesser things.’ ” He was just a lesser thing. She made her voice even louder than his, but still pretty, like she was singing to God himself.
What she wished for with all her might and knew could never never be: that she, Lee Jones, would have done with Ryder Jones. Someday.
Someday. Someday. Someday. Those words chimed like the bell of truth.
But that could never be. They belonged together.
Right in the middle of the song, she stopped singing. Her mouth was open, but no sound. A sigh slid right down the inside of her nose and out into the air.