"Day in the Life" Scenario
Abigail Boberg
The night was black and the sky was white. Black all over
like the depths of the sea, white as pearl. The window was open, and I sat on
the window-seat, my upper body leaning into the chilly air. Snow began to fall.
A person came along the road. It was a woman, with long
black hair that swung rhythmically as she walked. She was looking at me, and
her eyes seemed to bore holes in my skin. Her gait was neither slow nor quick,
only very steady; she seemed to lift each foot with a purpose, and set it down
with the same unwavering resolution. She was coming towards me.
“Is dis snow? Ah ain’t iver seen none.”
Her voice was soft and high and husky. She reached out a
long, dark arm and caught a snowflake tumbling its downy way from the clouds.
“It’s wet.”
She had no coat, only a black and red checkered tablecloth
pulled around her bare arms. It blew out behind her, cape-like. I wasn’t used
to having strangers in my yard, especially at night. “Ma’am,” I said, “Do you
need help finding… something?”
Her lips parted in a slow smile. “Ah ain’t lost, miss. Ah’m
lookin for Tea Cake, dat’s all.”
“Do you need a coat?” She was shivering, visibly. I had
plenty of warm clothing she could wear. I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing. I told her to wait a moment
while I opened the front door. She stepped onto the hall carpet, and I saw that
she was barefoot. The cold and snow that clung to her began to form a puddle
between her feet.
“Where are you from?”
“Ah come from Eatonville, down dat way.” She pointed down
the road, where the tracks her bare feet had left were being filled with fresh
snow.
I closed the door, pulled a chair to the fire, and turned up
the radio. She fell into the chair and propped her feet up before the flames.
Only then did I notice how dark her skin was. The darkness of the sky had all
but camouflaged her. I watched the wrinkles on her face, products of time and
tears and laughter.
“Is it very far to Eatonville?” I asked.
“’Depends.” She was quiet, then. I tried again.
“Ah don’t know. All ah knows is dat ah left for Orlandah. Ah
guess ah never arrived.”
She wasn’t listening. She leaned towards the radio, waving a
hand at me, “Hush.” I crept closer, straining to hear what had caught her
attention. A man’s voice sang:
De
Cap'n can’t read, de Cap'n can’t write
How
does he know that the time is right?
I
asked my Cap'n what de time of day
He
got mad and throwed his watch away.1
The voice was scratchy and old-fashioned, and I wondered
where the radio people had ever found so petrified a song, but the woman seemed
enthralled.
“Tea Cake ust’er sing dat song for us, when we was in de muck,” she said by way of explanation when the song had ended. “Ah have to find him.”
“Tea Cake? Your brother?”
“I was his– his wife. His Janie. He’s gone and dah-ed.” She
drew her syllables out, as though speaking them was drawing out her soul.
“I’m… sorry.” I was too brusque.
The program buzzed on. “–recording live from Cirque du
Soleil, performing in Listowell, Minnesota. Snow flurries tonight with a low
of…”
Janie turned to me, aghast. “Minnesotah? Dat’s up north
somewhere?”
I shook my head. “No, that’s here.”
Her brow furrowed, deepening worry-tracks that had worn
paths in her skin. “But– ah was in Floridy.” Then she softened again, something
else having caught her attention. “De sun, it come up, and de sun, it go’se
down, and Tea Cake, he’se de sun. De circus they do be speaking of, dat’s some
ole fancy French. They mean, ‘de circus of the sun.’ And ah’m going there to
find Tea Cake, if it takes mah last breath.” She stood up abruptly, knocking
the radio to the floor where the antenna bent and the weather forecast was
silent. The rocking chair received such a shove that it slid back and bumped
the wall.
“Janie,” I said with all the gentleness I could muster. “You
just told me your husband died. He can’t be at the circus.”
“Ah says he is. If ah say he is, he is.”
“The winter did,” I said.
“Who told de winter?”
“God did.”
Maybe the icy wind was getting to her, but she was all the
more striking, now. Her magnificent hair blew about freely; her bare head was
thrown back, in a stance of rebellion. “Ain’t no God can tell me what to do.
Ain’t no God never made me. Ah’m from de sky and the wind and de pear tree. Ah
came from the sky, and when ah die, ah go back into it.
“Ah means tuh ask God,” she continued, “why he let Tea Cake
die. God nevah told me nothin’,” she spit out savagely. “He tears down de old
world at evening and builds uh new world for sunrise. He sends de hurricane. He
don’t bother with Janie.”
She drew back sharply, afraid of her own words, and fled
into the wind. I mustered up my courage, slid on my coat, and murmuring a
half-prayer, half-complaint under my breath, slammed the door shut and stood in
Janie’s footprints.
She had fallen to her knees just where the sidewalk meets
the road, underneath one of those streetlights that the electric company put up
last year.
“All right,” I said sternly. “What do you want? Tell me
where you want to go.” If this woman was a lunatic, she’d have to go to the
asylum.
Janie’s whisper could hardly be heard through the wind. “Ah
don’t know. Ah thought love was like uh pear tree in de spring, with white
blossoms… Tea Cake found me. There’s nothing left.”
I dropped to my knees in the snow beside her, and put my
coat around her. “Won’t you– please– come
back inside?”
“You believe in God?” She peered at me suspiciously.
“Yes, indeed,” I said. “God made the world, and God made me,
and I’m alive because he wants me to bring glory to Him, and I’m praying to Him
this very instant that I can get you warmed up before you freeze to death out
here.”
“What’s prayin’ for? God ain’t listenin’ to you.”
“Isn’t He?” I asked. “Isn’t
He listening? Can’t you hear Him? Listen–!”
We both ceased our speaking for a moment to hear the shrill
wind as it whipped the street.
“Ah sho’ don’t.”
“You aren’t used to hearing him. You’re used to your pear
tree, and Tea Cake, and the sky. But, Janie! If you aren’t used to something,
is it false?”
“Ah don’t know.”
“You’re not used to me. Am I real?”
Janie laughed. “De way ah see it,” she said, “De whole world
is full of pear blossoms– like dis.” She held up a handful of soft, white snow.
“Some of us know dat, some of us don’t. An’ if you don’t know, you got tuh go
tuh God, tuh find out fuh yourself. You got tuh understand de way de world
works. Ah must not disturb de plan of de universe.”
I pointed to her small footprints in the snow. “Look where
you disturbed the universe.”
“Ah got no questions,” Janie said, “Excepting one, and dat’s
why Tea Cake died. Ah got to ask God dat one. Ah’ve asked it a dozen times
already and ah haven’t got any answer. Ah’ve got to go on askin’. Ah don’t
believe ah’ll evah get an answer, but ah got to go on asking just the same.”
She stumbled to her feet and laid the coat in my arms. “Thanks, miss.”
Locks of my loose hair fall in my eyes, a gust of wind
through the street. A moment. And I miss the desperate motion, the start, as
the black woman fades into the storm.
It’s in the wee morning hours and I have several inches of
snow, and three barefoot footprints, on my front porch.
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