“CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT, JIM? I swanny, I ain’t known what to say to Jeffrey when he was takin’ me home yesterday. My mind was spinnin’ all this way and that. Don’t know why he ain’t told me himself he’s gay. Why he ain’t told me, Jim?”
“Reckon he thinks you can’t handle it good.”
“Well why not? I can handle it!” I jump up and pace back and forth in front of my baskets. They’s rattling on my stand ’cause the wind’s kicking up. “Shoot, ain’t nothin’ needs handlin’ in my life ’cept for my sweet Jeffrey’s gay, I’m ’bout to lose my house, and that ol’ For Sale sign’s stuck up over yonder. Oh that, and pretty soon I’m gonna be sippin’ dad-gum skim milk, eatin’ soggy collard greens and greasy catfish in that old folks’ home called Sunnydale Farms! No, Jim. Ain’t a thing in the world I can’t handle!”
Whooee! I needed that—a woman got to let off steam ever now and then. Jim’s always been real patient for me so he listens to me holler a while. Then tells me he done come up with a plan.
“You ’member how that old man and his dog got hit with the Mack truck?” he asks me.
“Gracious, Jim. You know I do.” I’m wondering what in the world he’s getting at.
“Well, your love basket’s what put ’em together forever, ain’t it?”
“Well I was thinkin’ so, but how do I really know? That old man and his dog were just bound to get hit sometime, right?” I come back over and sit next to him to pout. “Shoot, I can’t do no magic, Jim. I been thinkin’ my love basket for Jeffrey and Susanne Maybree was workin’, too, but come to find out he’s a homo-sexual. Can’t be too good of a magic basket if you ask me, ’cause that sure ain’t gonna work. No sir.”
“You just wait and see, Essie Mae. If you start to see it workin’, will you believe me then?”
I tell him ’course I’m gonna believe him then, but what’s that got to do with a thing?
So this is what he tells me: “You go on back home tonight and when you get there, go rifle through my closet. You’re bound to find a hair of mine somewhere, seein’ as you ain’t had my clothes cleaned since the day I died.”
“You want me to make us a love basket, Jim?” Lord have mercy, I’m getting kinda scared. “What you mean? What it gonna do?”
“Mama, if you make a love basket with my hair and your hair, it’s gonna put us together forever. Wouldn’t you like that?”
“Well ’course I’d like it, but—really Jim?”
“Jesus is here too, Mama,” he says. “You wanna meet Jesus, now don’t you?”
Well now, you know I do. If I could be with Jesus, I wouldn’t have a care in the world, now would I? So I tell Daddy Jim that if I get to seeing Jeffrey’s basket work, I’ll make us a basket too. That way, I can leave all my troubles behind me and go on to be with him and Jesus in heaven. And won’t have to set foot in that Sunnydale Farms.
“Lord better not hit me with a Mack truck, though,” I say. “Lord, anythin’ but a Mack truck.”