“Don’t go calling my baby an embarrassment,” Mama snapped.
“It’s not the baby, it’s us, it’s me, and I admit that. I admit that I might be disappointing. I’ve always wanted to be like you. From the day I was born I wanted to be a doctor. Unlucky goal for a Negro, but I wanted to sew people up, fix the problems that were wrong in their bodies, in their lives, and I still intend to do that. I do. My father was a janitor, and my schooling hasn’t come easy to me. I work two jobs, and I still get help, but I’m not trying to complain. I’m trying to explain to you that I’m the type of man who will do anything to accomplish his goal.”
Then he turned to Evelyn in front of Mama and Daddy, bent his left knee until it touched the floor. “I love you, Evelyn; one of the things I love most about you is that you’re such a proud woman. It pains me that you had to walk around in this condition, and I haven’t been able to do anything to help you. I vow to you, I vow to you, sir, ma’am”—he turned to her parents then—“I will never diminish that pride again.” He leaned back into Evelyn, lifted her hand.
“If you will have me, Evelyn, I would be honored to be your husband, to serve you for the rest of your life, to spend the rest of my own life ensuring that you never feel shame.”
Evelyn didn’t allow herself to speak, not with her father there whose disdain she could sense from where she sat. Her tears started anyway, the heft of all those years of girlhood dreaming, these last months of yearning, culminating now on the verge of release.
Still she didn’t say a word. She thought if she said the word yes in her father’s presence it would doom her life and everything it yielded to a gloomy, stunted fate, so she clipped her great rush of emotion, and she nodded instead, wrapped her arms around Renard, and exhaled into his neck.
That was enough for Mama, who yelped, dabbing her eyes, but her father just sat looking at Renard as though he wanted to slap him but didn’t have the energy.
Evelyn’s father turned to her finally, gave a look of sad surrender, and said, “Okay.” Then he stood, shook Renard’s hand, picked up the sandwich Evelyn’s mama had packed for his next round, and left the table.
When her father was gone, Evelyn let out a squeal she thought Miss Georgia might be privy to across the street. She let her tears stream out hard and fast, and when Renard stood up and spun Mama around, she cocked her head back and laughed and laughed.
When they were done celebrating, Renard asked Evelyn if he could take her to his own people’s house to show her off, and she said nothing would make her happier. They rode the bus all the way
to Amelia Street. She had never been to this part of town, and she was alarmed by the dust on the road, the narrow brown double houses, their old crumbling wood. Dozens of people crowded into them, standing on upper-level stoops looking down. Shoeless little boys danced outside to beats they made from pans and tin cans. Mules pulling garbage trucks passed with their pungent stench.
“It doesn’t usually smell like this,” Renard said.
“I know,” she said, as if she hadn’t been wondering the same.
There seemed to be as many people in Renard’s daddy’s house as there were in her own family’s for a holiday, and everyone was overjoyed to see Renard in one piece. They said they had heard about her. They said she was too pretty for Renard. They kept lifting his uniform pants and tapping his legs to make sure they were real. They offered him liquor, they rubbed her belly, they said the baby was a boy, had to be because of how her round belly pointed out. They said Evelyn and Renard could both come and live with them if they needed. They said they’d watch the baby while the newlyweds were in school, and Evelyn couldn’t remember being so happy.
That night when Evelyn and Renard walked back home, Renard pulled the picture he’d been keeping above his nightstand out of his pocket. It had one crease in it from where he’d folded it to fit his wallet but otherwise looked the same as it did when she’d given it to him at the train station nearly a year earlier.
“Seems like it was just yesterday that I gave it to you.”
“Not to me,” he said.
Evelyn wasn’t ready to part from him when they reached her house, so they sat on the porch like they always had. They didn’t talk for a while; she just held on to his jacket, and he rubbed her stomach with the fervor of a man who had to make up for lost time.
“Why didn’t you write me about the baby?” he asked finally. “It might have given me more to look forward to.”
Evelyn shrugged. “I didn’t want to scare you off. I didn’t know what your reaction would be, and I was scared I guess, scared you wouldn’t have us.”
Renard shook his head. “You know me better than that.”
“Of course I do. I should have said something, but don’t you see I was frightened? And war changes people. It sounds like it wasn’t so bad for you, but I’ve heard terrible stories of people coming back fractions of themselves.”
He nodded. “I understand. It doesn’t matter. At least I know now. At least I can be with you now.” He paused. “I didn’t know what to expect going, and I certainly can’t complain. I got to see another part of the world, and I’m back safe. But, well”—his stammer returned on both words, and Evelyn clutched his hand—“I didn’t tell you about the worst of it.”
She shook her head.
“We were stationed in a small town outside of Paris. There was a white unit next door, and they came by from time to time, shot off the word nigger, but otherwise kept to themselves. At first it wasn’t much different than home really. The whites got their food on plates, while we got tin trays. We were served one meal, but whites had seconds. Whites lived in rooms with shiny floors and washing machines, and we had concrete and potbellied stoves.”
“But like I said, that was nothing. I was used to that and would have been grateful to tolerate it. Only it didn’t take long for it to escalate. One night there was a party and we were preparing to go; see, the French people had invited us, trying to show their appreciation toward us black servicemen. So they made up the passes for us, and I put them on the commanding officer’s desk. When he saw them, he shook his head, tore them up, said there weren’t going to be any Negro girls at that party and he didn’t want his niggers dancing with any white women. I didn’t want to go anyway,” Renard pinched Evelyn’s side. “Wasn’t any dance partner I was seeking overseas, but some of my buddies, they went just to spite him. They were arrested that night.”