But like most things, Jonnie didn’t just change Don’s everything all at once. She came into his life and his trailer not in a whirlwind but by degrees. Every day bringing clothes, a lamp, shabby cotton curtains to replace the blue velvet dust catchers in the living room and other small items and knickknacks to mark the place as hers. Don was embarrassed that he didn’t have any of the trappings of a real home, that all of his furniture in the trailer put together wasn’t worth the effort to throw it out. Jonnie didn’t seem to notice, or if she did, she didn’t care a great deal. Don knew he was being unkind, but he thought worse of Jonnie for that acceptance, for being so young and not wanting more.
After a few days, she brought her little girl to visit, Sasha, a sweet little thing with curly hair the color of sand. Don had seen Sasha before at the restaurant, but she always stayed close to her grandmother and never let Mae get more than an arm’s reach from her sight. If Jonnie came to stay for good, Don wasn’t sure where Sasha would end up. You’d have to kill Mae to get that little girl away from her, and Don had no desire to fight. Jonnie might. You never knew what a mother would do to keep her child. Don didn’t want to think about how Jonnie would react if it came to all that. If Don were being honest, he’d tell Jonnie that he didn’t want the girl. His babies were all grown and it had been a long time since he’d had to talk to children, entertain them, or pretend to be interested in their tiny triumphs. Now he wasn’t sure how much he could fake.
But that wasn’t it. Don knew he shouldn’t blame Sasha but couldn’t quite get over that her daddy was a white man from the Love Valley Church Jonnie belonged to for a short time. The child couldn’t help who her daddy was, Don knew that. She had no say at all over who brought her into the world. But every time he looked at her soft hazel eyes he felt something close to betrayal, a sickly uneasiness that went with anything associated with white people.
It didn’t help that Jonnie met the man at an Eternal Enlighted Masters meeting. That’s what they called themselves. Don, of course, called them other things. A whole group of them lived together not in one house, but by spells. Two of them, then three, then switch up. Every week they’d met in the leader’s basement and talked and shared food. Jonnie missed the talking with people who seemed to be interested in her life problems and her daily struggles to be good. Religion shouldn’t smell musty, Don told her again and again about her basement church. But she missed it. Especially the dancing. Everyone in the flock was taught to waltz. Dancing is what brought Sasha’s father into Jonnie’s arms, and his smooth flowing rhythm, his careful way of finessing her into turns, his small, dainty little dips. The day he found out that Jonnie was pregnant, he waltzed out of that basement, out of the county, and by the time Jonnie heard tell of him, she couldn’t really remember anything but the dancing that she liked about him. Turns out there’s not that much enlightenment in the world. But even that love gone wrong wasn’t enough to totally sour Jonnie on the Eternal Masters. She loved the idea of good country people, black and white, mostly white, in their bare feet, spinning on someone’s old shag carpet like members of the royal family.
Jonnie even taught Don to waltz. He didn’t want to at first and briefly considered letting that be the first time that he told Jonnie no, but he finally decided to wait until he had something more important to protest. As it turned out, he liked it. He thought about loving it but wouldn’t commit to loving a new thing, not at this late date, but he couldn’t deny that the oompah-pah music, the swishing across the floor, holding a woman lightly but with precision like holding a tool, took him out of his head like nothing he’d done in a long time.
Don had to get up early to get Jonnie to the restaurant. Mae and Jonnie had hours of preparation work to do to get the lunches and dinners carryout ready.
“You coming by for dinner?”
“I’ll be by to pick you up, but I’m not sure about dinner.”
“Be here by seven, okay? I’ll miss you.”
Don gripped the steering wheel tighter, hoping Jonnie wouldn’t notice. “I’ll be here, baby.” Jonnie got out of the car, wiggle-walked for Don’s benefit on the concrete path to the restaurant. She turned to make sure that he saw her performance. Don hadn’t moved but watched Jonnie play her game. Framed by the picnic tables on one side, the thick yellow grass on the other, and on both sides low-reaching poplar branches’ spring green leaves highlighting Jonnie in the center, her chin just over her bare shoulder, her face expectant and bright. “I’m a lucky man,” Don yelled. But even as he said it, he realized that this was the first time he was telling Jonnie what he knew she wanted to hear.
After work Don waited just as Jay had the day before on Sylvia’s patio. She might stay in that apartment to get her clothes and to sleep, but Don knew if she could, she’d be messing around in her own yard. He wouldn’t have to wait long. Don took a seat at the table and closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see any more of Sylvia’s industry, her flowerbeds cleaned and neat, already prepared for summer growth. Sylvia never kept a neat house, but her yard was another story altogether.
Used to be when Sylvia and Don lived together at the trailer in Millers Creek, she’d had little pots, terra-cotta, plastic ones, pots all over the place that she’d bought at garage sales and thrift stores, all full of tiny little seedlings bursting out of the red clay soil she’d scraped up from the yard. This tacky mess grown on a few dimes would in the summer become Sylvia’s lush garden with great masses of old-fashioned color in a jungle all over: bleeding heart, sweet peas, purple coneflower, coreopsis, even some showy annuals as long as she could grow them from seed. When they were very poor and not just ordinary poor, years ago, Sylvia would find birdseed and plant giant sunflowers around their trailer. Don loved their great brown faces and, though he never told her, thought Sylvia a little magical for willing them into being. Don searched the pots for the Magic Marker shorthand only Sylvia understood. He liked her simple printing, a man’s way of writing, bold and unadorned.
A few years ago Sylvia wouldn’t speak to him at all. She peeled potatoes at the sink. Water steaming hot as she stroked a brush across the speckled potato bodies. The water sang into the silver sink, making Don content to be with her. Sylvia looked to have forgotten he was there and concentrated on the sweet-looking potatoes, not soft or mealy-looking, but plump just the size to fit nicely in a fist. Don arranged the junk in his pockets, gum, receipts, a cigarette stub he’d fished out of Sylvia’s garden.
“You gonna wash them all day,” he said not particularly hateful, but he could tell that he took Sylvia’s moment and ruined it. Before she had time to really think about it, Sylvia threw the knife into Don’s leg, propped on the chair in front of him.
“Sylvia!” Don watched the blood rush through his white sock onto his fingers. It was a good shot, but hardly fatal, a little more than a scratch really, anyone could see that. Still Sylvia wanted to feel something, rush to Don with genuine concern. All she could manage to do was pull another knife out of the drawer and continue washing the potatoes.