WHEN LEE WOKE UP SATURDAY MORNING, THE FIRST thing she did was to touch her poor mutilated shoulder. It hurt so bad she sleepily swung her legs over the side of the bed and shuffled her way to the good light in the bathroom to inspect her injury. When she saw in the mirror her whole shoulder was swollen and red, she woke up. Around each of the four curved lines, the flesh seemed infected. Then she glanced at her face. Her cheeks and forehead, even her neck, were red with fury. Her sleeveless nightgown was pink, but the flush on her face wasn’t reflection. In wonder she stared at her face and saw she was still turning; she’d never seen herself so close to beet red. Then she realized her bottom was throbbing. It was shame that had really awakened her. Not the shoulder.
She hurt so badly she was afraid to go to the toilet.
She stalked back into the bedroom.
Yes, he was in bed. He had his elbow crooked back behind his head, and he was using it for a pillow. The real pillow was pushed aside. When he came in the night before, he had not wakened her. Though it was painful to walk, she hobbled over to the bed. No need to bend over to sniff him. Over his body hung the rank aroma of klavern beer, and Ryder had a smug little upturn to his lips.
Before she knew it, she had the broom in her hand. She had been to the kitchen and back. She wanted to bash him. She wanted to smack his nose into his head. While she tightened her grip on the broom handle, she realized she didn’t have the right weapon. The straw end was too soft, and the handle end was too light. Quickly she used the broom to sweep away the cloud of beer vapors hovering over him. She felt witch-crazy—sweeping the air over him. If she bashed his upturned face with all her might, before she could come close to getting even, he’d just wake up. Leaning the broom against the wall, she glided noiselessly into the children’s room.
Though she was aware of their three little shapes under the summer sheets, she didn’t even glance at the children. She knew Bobby and Tommy were curled into the double bed; Shirley had her own little single bed. Her three little bears. Their beds almost filled the bedroom. Solemn as a judge, Bobby’s baseball bat stood in the corner. His fielder’s glove had slid halfway down the shaft. Lee bent over and started working the glove up the bat when Bobby said, “Mom?”
His voice was so pleased and fresh, she felt washed with guilt. She could feel all the blood draining out of her head while she stood up.
“Did I wake you up, son?”
“No, ma’am. I was already awake,” he said softly, respectful of his sleeping brother and sister. “Just lying here thinking.” He sat up.
He was wearing a Superman T-shirt to sleep in, and he was so adorable, she wanted to gather him in her arms and kiss him all over. She knew he was too old for that, and she blushed even to have thought of it.
“Mom,” he said, concerned, “what happened to your shoulder.”
She wanted terribly to tell him. She looked at him again, his brown hair down on his forehead. Really, she liked his hair better that way than when it was all combed with water for church. The dangling shock of hair made him look more like a little boy. No matter how much she wanted to complain about Ryder, she knew Bobby was too little to tell him about his father. Maybe when he was sixteen.
“Well,” she answered slowly, “I don’t know. Must of been mosquito bites I scratched in my sleep.” But Bobby wasn’t looking at her shoulder now;he was looking at her breasts, through the rayon nightgown. While she knew it was just childish curiosity, for just a second Bobby had looked like Ryder. “I got to go to the bathroom,” she said.
By the time she stepped back up to the sink, she was wondering if she would go through with it—if she would ever get even with Ryder, and more. Though she dreaded it, she knew she had to sit on the toilet.
It hurt so bad to go, the tears came to her eyes and overflowed. She wished Ryder could be locked up in jail for what he’d done to her. Well, at least she’d found the Miles College phone number in the telephone book—something he was too uneducated to do—and called in the warning. Even if the bomb had gone off, it would only have killed a few. Lee didn’t want to kill those people, any of them. They hadn’t done anything to her. She remembered her satisfaction when even the crippled girl had rolled out the door onto the porch and someone had turned her around and bumped the big wheels of her chair down the step.
Last September, Lee had felt the blast come up through the floor, just after the congregation had risen to sing. Again, nearly a year later, Lee shuddered with the vibrations of it. Her body had known something awful was happening. Right at that moment, something had happened that she’d always remember.
When she’d seen their photographs in the paper, she had thought, They’re nothing but innocent children, and she knew the people who wanted to blow them up were crazy; they weren’t just bad;they were so crazy with hate it was hard to imagine. And Ryder had almost made her blow up innocent people. It could have been somebody like Ryder or Dynamite Bob who did the first job. But not somebody like herself. After all, she hadn’t done it. She hadn’t killed anybody at Miles College, but if she had, it would have been Ryder’s fault all the same.
Standing before the bathroom mirror, she gulped for breath. She knew when vampires looked in the mirror, they didn’t see themselves. All the time she was thinking, she was staring at herself without seeing anything, but she wasn’t a vampire. She hated blood. She was breathing hard. If you remembered somebody was as real as yourself, how could you kill anybody? As long as they didn’t attack you. But they said the real nonviolent ones wouldn’t fight back, no matter what you did to them. She could imagine herself, like the blond girl last night, standing around with them like they were just people. Like when you waited for the bus. Almost, Lee wished she could come to a college like that. It was outside agitators who stirred them up anyway. Coloreds weren’t to blame any more than she would be to blame for things Ryder talked her into doing.
She focused in the mirror on her shoulder, on the four nail marks like crescent moons. It was Ryder she wanted to kill. And she knew how to do it. He’d taught her.
Quickly, she leaned over and flushed the toilet. Even though it wasn’t her period, she’d have to wear a pad. But suppose she really did it? Killed him. She could make it look like an accident. Send the kids over to her mother’s. His brother LeRoy was on the force;he’d want it covered up. LeRoy belonged to the same klavern as Ryder, but LeRoy wouldn’t want his brother associated with bomb making. Not only smarter, LeRoy was a better man than Ryder. LeRoy was proud of himself and his police uniform.
Now why was that?
LeRoy was younger, and he’d grown up after their father had deserted the family. LeRoy had grown up better because he didn’t have any bad example hanging around. And Bobby and Tommy would grow up better if Ryder wasn’t there.
There was a gentle knocking on the door. “Mom, can I get in the bathroom now, please.”
Bobby was a polite, good child. She asked him to tiptoe into the bedroom and please bring her robe and hand it to her through a crack in the door.
Without any protest, he did as he was told.
“Here, Mom,” he said from the other side of the door. She reached her hand through, put on the robe, checked the toilet to be sure there was nothing shocking in it, and came out. Sweeping his hair aside, she couldn’t resist planting a kiss on his forehead. “I’m going to send y’all over to Big Mama’s,” she said, “so your daddy can sleep late.”
Didn’t she sound like a good wife? Well, she was. But she was an even better mother.
“Want me to get them up?”
“Yes.” She went to the phone and explained quietly to her mother: “Ryder wants the kids out of the house. He’s making something. I don’t know what. He said he wants to concentrate.”
Concentrate—that was a word her mother used to use when Lee was a schoolgirl. “Never mind the radio or what all,” her mother would say. “Just concentrate on your lessons.”
Lee went to the cardboard canister of Quaker Oats; deep down in the oats was where they kept the directions for making a bomb. The folded paper was always coated with oatmeal dust when she drew it out. Well, she’d get dressed because once she made the bomb and started the clock, she’d need to get out herself. She’d just check to be sure he was sleeping soundly.
Once the kids were out of the house, she’d start on the wiring. She could use the dynamite sticks from last night, but she’d start all over with the mechanism. After he hurt her, Ryder had left her lying on her stomach, facedown, while he retrieved the dud bomb. She wasn’t going to try the drip method again. She’d go over to the clock method. Not even on grass last night, but her face on the dark dirt, she had cried till her cheek was lying in a little mud puddle. If Ryder woke up while she was working on it at the kitchen table, she’d just smile sweet as pie and tell him she was practicing. If he didn’t wake up, she’d put the bomb on the night table right beside his head. Whether he woke up or not would be a sign, whether to kill him or not.
She pictured the cloth on the bedside table. It had a ten-inch drop of crocheted lace that her mother’s mother had made. She didn’t want to blow that up. When Ryder saw the black mud on one side of her face, he had laughed and said, “Well, I guess you’re half nigger.” Before she set the bomb on the table, she’d take up the cloth.
She thought of the expression “Saturday night special” for the cheap guns that the coloreds bought. Well, this would be more special, and she couldn’t wait till night. She needed to do it at least by early Saturday afternoon, before Big Mama would be sending the kids back to the house.