Bodies and Souls Read online

  Today Hester was taking the “flower route,” because a warm June—and it was certainly that this year!—pulls out flowers in abundant colors. Unfortunately, taking that route meant she had to pass a sun- and fire-seared lot. Four teenage Negroes were idling at that corner, near an abandoned building, still a few blocks away from where she caught the bus five days a week, sometimes six, even seven—when one of the regular staff was sick or absent and she was called to please, please “come and help us out please.”

  The boys were squatting near the building, which had once been a small Baptist church. Part of its name was still on it—Ch ch f ohn the aptist—but the name was further obscured by red letters: KILLER BLOOD.

  “Mawnin,” one of the boys said to her.

  She smelled his breath. Liquor. “Morning,” she said curtly. She was no prude, but she disapproved of their getting drunk, and it was very early; so she disapproved mightily. Trouble. She saw a black and white squad car moving along the street. Alerted, the boys threw a bottle into the debris in the field. Hester waited. The white policemen drove by slowly, eyeing the youngmen. Hester had seen this countless times. They would look, their pallid faces staring out. They'd pretend to be about to drive away, and, instead, braking, they'd rush out and corner whomever they wanted.

  They did that now. They shoved the boys against the wall, palms pressed against it. Then one of the two—while the other drew his gun—went from boy to boy and kicked his ankles out, away from the wall, so that their bodies were all at a sharp incline.

  Their guns alert, the police frisked the boys. Finding nothing of interest, they left them in that surrendered position. When they heard the car moving, the boys spun around, screaming. “Fuck you!” “Fuckin’ white pigs!” “Motherfuckers!” Another boy struck a match and threw it on a pile of debris—crushed papers, dried weeds.

  Flames rose!

  Not here! Hester's silent anger shouted. Why always here?

  Unfed, the small fire died.

  There were often random fires in Watts. All here lived with the scream of sirens. It erupted in instant fury—from police cars, ambulances, fire engines. It was not rare for rampaging youths to throw rocks at firemen—because they had the same faces, the same look of contempt, as the police.

  The policemen who had frisked the scattering youngmen swerved back. Stopping the car with a deafening screech, they jumped out with guns drawn.

  Murderers, ready murderers! Hester thought. She echoed the warning of the Lord: I will scatter your bones round about your altars.

  She decided to change her route, although it meant passing the loan shops and liquor stores. She reached the bus stop. She adjusted her hat to shade her face from what threatened to be a hot sun. It was that heat that comes with wind, she knew—those awful Santa Anas.

  Fire.

  She looked back but could not see the field where the brief flames had danced.

  Why here? Why the iron bars on our windows?

  She sat on the bench and waited for the bus. The advertisement on it had been changed. A mortuary. There were mortuary signs and posters all over the city. The big mortuary, the famous one—that one didn't advertise on the benches here. Segregated death. And anger.

  Segregated anger!

  Fire! In her mind, the dead flames leapt alive.

  Now is the end come upon thee, and I will send mine anger upon thee, God's words reassured her.

  The bus came, and she got on.

  Usually she knew several of the other maids who journeyed into the wealthy parts of the city. She would sit and even chat pleasantly if she knew the person next to her well enough. But today's changed time rendered her anonymous among the scattering of black faces. The bus had not yet collected the Mexicans in their own isolated stations a few miles away.

  The morning scrim of haze had already lifted. Distant, spectral palm trees outlined the city in imperfect designs. Many of the freeways were bordered by green knolls; there, even weeds grow pretty flowers. Bluish stars. Orange-flamed tips like lit matches.

  Flames. The word glued itself to her mind.

  She transferred to the Sunset Boulevard bus so automatically that she didn't realize it fully until she saw that horrible green mansion with those naked statues on the lawn and those devil-ram heads on the vases full of artificial flowers. She'd look out periodically, hoping the statues would be gone; other times she just turned to the other side of the street. Today she looked, because yesterday she had noticed that one of the statues had toppled over near the burned tree. Yes, fire had attacked the wasteful house. / am against thee and will execute judgments in the midst of thee in the sight of the nations. Look at all those silly tourists having their pictures taken before that outrage!

  At the first gate to Bel Air, its twin white columns proclaiming guarded exclusivity, Hester got out. She stood to one side of the familiar white concrete pond of concentric circles of orange, lavender, and yellow flowers, perfectly kept. At her regular time, there would be other maids waiting to be picked up by their employers. Black and brown faces, white uniforms. They would get into one of the cars that had just descended the velvety hills beyond the gates: “Mawnin, ma'am.” “Good morning, Agnes.” Or whatever name.

  Hester always hated to wait, preferring they be waiting for her. But that didn't happen often. Like those in “Roots,” her African descendants had been raped, their kindly wealth stolen by white men. She didn't believe other Negroes had cooperated in trapping the slaves, no, the television sponsors had demanded that lie in exchange for showing the glorious saga.

  Yes, she liked to see the car waiting for her because then it was easier to imagine, as she did now and then, that she—a princess—was being driven up to the tall house on the top of the hill. Too, she hated to wait because she didn't know who would be picking her up. Only once had it been that judge. He had hardly seen her, and she had returned the favor. Usually, it was Mrs. Stephens who picked her up—and talked all the way into the house. Once or twice it was Mark, the college boy, whom she didn't mind, might even get to like. The oldest daughter, Tessa, whom she didn't mind either, had just disappeared. Once Hester had asked about continuing to clean the unused bedroom of Miss Tessa, and Mrs. Stephens put her finger to her mouth and shushed even the name, as if not wanting that lurking hateful younger daughter—Hester deliberately forgot her name—to hear her. Hester had seen that ugly commercial on television where a girl exhibits herself lewdly in denim pants, and she had thought it was the Stephens creature, but the Stephenses were millionaires and that judge wouldn't have allowed his daughter to work, although Mark sometimes referred to his “job.”

  She saw the car and Mrs. Stephens in it, saw the carefully dyed hair—very natural looking, Hester had to admit—brownish hazel. She wouldn't have known it was dyed if she hadn't heard her make an appointment one day on the telephone.

  “Good morning, Hester,” Mrs. Stephens called out of the creamy brown Mercedes.

  “Morning, Mrs. Stephens,” Hester said, and got in.

  “I'm sorry I'm late,” Mrs. Stephens began to rattle on. “It's been an unnerving day; that's why I called and asked you to come later—you can leave at the same time, of course. Tessa is back! Don't say anything to her, please! And yesterday at lunch I saw the last person I thought to see again in the whole universe, I'm just about to come undone— …”

  Do! Hester hated to be converted into a concerned mammy like in that terrible Gone with the Wind she'd walked out on with all those Negroes silly-happy and just loving to be slaves.

  They drove into Bel Air, past manicured lawns and flowers that grow only for the very rich, past houses that dash behind trees or sink into private hills to avoid uninvited contact. Everything perfect, beautiful, rich.

  “I'm so unnerved.” Mrs. Stephens had a way of repeating or forgetting what she'd said. She touched the edges of her temples, tenderly.

  What unnerved her, Hester didn't know. She had everything.

  Mrs. Stephens went on. �
��And I may as well tell you before you hear it on the news: The judge upheld the death sentence of that poor black man. Yes, Hester, he cast the decisive vote for death. And you know I'm against capital punishment; I hate it! I haven't spoken to him since—my little way of protesting. He knows I oppose capital punishment, it's so unfair, you know—mainly minorities and the poor—it's so unfair. You know how I feel about all that.”

  No. Hester pressed her lips shut. Fire. The word itself flared into flames. She looked out at birds of paradise on the lawn as they drove past the portals at the gate; the ledges were trimmed like some of those silly quivering poodles maids in the area had to walk. Her gaze returned to the birds of paradise. Orange. Flames. Fire. So will I stretch out my hand upon them, and make the land desolate, yea, more desolate than the wilderness, Hester remembered.

  Mrs. Stephens parked the car, which made no noise at all. Hester came five days a week “to tidy up.” “And don't you dare do one more thing!” Mrs. Stephens would admonish her periodically. They-had a regular maid, but she had other chores, and there was a housekeeper—that Helga or Inga or Heidi—Hester refused to remember her name; in her mind, she called the white housekeeper the “head maid” or “that imported servant.” It took that many people, and others who came periodically, to keep the house, which was enormous, two and a half storeys tall. Like the palace my great, great, great grandfather shared his wealth from, Hester would think, but his was grander!

  Ahead, like a snake on a rock, the hated Linda sunbathed by the pool; yes, Hester could remember the name of the younger Stephens daughter on occasion. The girl's top lay loosely and unstrapped across her breasts—no, her nipples. The top was almost briefer than her sunglasses. She was brown, dark brown, the tanned body oiled, blond hair streaked. She crooked one leg, the other stretched out, extending her bare foot, the nails manicured.

  “Poor Linda,” Mrs. Stephens said absently. “She does need to relax; she had a dreadful experience last night at one of those awful punk places or whatever; the guard claimed she— … So don't say a word to her. You know how the judge dotes on her. Well, can you believe they actually said she took off her— … It's too awful!”

  Linda removed the sunglasses and glanced at her mother, and then at Hester.

  Whatever they said she did, she did! Hester thought.

  Linda put the sunglasses back on and straightened out both legs, raised both hands and placed them under her blond head, her shaved underarms exposed, whiter than the rest of her. The strip of her top slid off one nipple.

  Hester inhaled audibly.

  Linda responded to the powerful gaze. “Hi!”

  “Morning,” Hester said. Under the white-hot sun, wavy, barely perceptible smoke seemed to rise from Linda's burned-brown flesh. Oh, vapor from the pool— … Hester continued to watch the rising smoky steam.

  In the garden hibiscuses grew in various colors. Trashy flowers, Hester thought. Mrs. Stephens referred to them as “rose mallows.” In Hester's mind, the sweaty vapor leapt as smoke from Linda's body and turned one of the lush bushes brown.

  Hester followed Mrs. Stephens into the house. Mark was coming out of the breakfast room. “Morning, Miz Washington,” he said.

  She stretched to her full stature. He didn't always call her that, but he did increasingly—called her Miss, although she was Mrs.—or maybe he was calling her that new “Miz.” She had tried at first to find a pattern to the times he addressed her formally—so courteous—but she hadn't been able to, just as she wasn't able to figure out when he would be wearing the black-rimmed glasses, when not. She supposed he called her “Miss” when her royal blood “showed through” most clearly.

  “Morning, Mr. Mark,” she said. He was a good-looking white man. Serious, too.

  “Where are you going, dear?” Mrs. Stephens asked casually. Again she touched the sides of her face, right by the ears—a curious nervous reaction she had. Hester knew she was fifty, perhaps a little older; she had a slender figure, guarded carefully by hours at a “body shop” every other day and by careful green lunches—except now and then when, she would “confess,” she had eaten more than she ought at some place called Shay too.

  “To a lecture at school,” Mark said.

  “Learn a lot!” Mrs. Stephens exhorted. She looked up the stairs. “Tessa's back,” she told Hester again.

  “Yes, Mrs. Stephens.”

  Square as a white domino, the white housekeeper appeared. “Gut mornung,” she snapped at Hester.

  Hester nodded. She was, after all, no matter what they called her, just another maid, even if she wore a different uniform and lived in her own “quarters” here and could tell her what to do. So important, that Hilde—and just because she'd worked for that judge's father, who brought her here—imported her from Europe.

  “Hilde will tell you what needs doing today, dear.” Mrs. Stephens turned Hester over to the square woman.

  Mrs. Stephens took a step away, another. Then she just stood there as if paralyzed, looking bewildered into her own magnificent house. Hester saw her staring at the paintings on the walls, some very strange ones, some very beautiful. One was just lines bunched in one corner; another a sphere filled with silver chrome, which dripped into different shapes as the day wore on; others, the beautiful ones, of grand ladies and gentlemen—all white, of course; paintings like tiled linoleum; and there were peaceful landscapes— …

  Mrs. Stephens's stare shifted toward the stairway, which branched into a graceful Y; she stared about the room filled with vases of freshly cut, carefully arranged flowers; at drapes that swept the floor like a bride's gown. She seemed to study the high arched windows. Sunlight drowning in the pool flooded the room in a reflection of blazing light.

  The light that will expose them! Hester looked at Mrs. Stephen Stephens III just standing there as if wondering where to go, frowning into her own palatial house as if it owned her. “Hester,” she said, without turning around.

  “Ma'am?”

  “I'm sorry.” She reached back, as if to touch her.

  “Ma'am?”

  “I mean I'm really sorry. About the judge. He affirmed the death sentence of a man of your color. And I'm sorry, really sincerely sorry.”

  Hester said nothing. She turned to look outside, where the judge's favorite child lay in the sun. Let her body roast! Flames rose and jumped to the trees, and trees fell into the pool, which bubbled and boiled over.

  “…—dosting wery vell.”

  “What?”

  “Dat you don't been dosting wery veil,” Heidi or Helga or Whoever said.

  “Where?” Hester challenged.

  “Everyvere,” the white woman said.

  Hester went to the maids’ quarters and changed into her uniform. Then she went and got the cleaning equipment and began to vacuum. The Persian carpet. She had never noticed the buried orange in it. Buried fire. The vacuum cleaner would pull out the contained flames. They would curl toward the ceiling, swirl there, dancing—fire crawling over the floor and then reaching out, jumping to another house, then another—to the very portals of Bel Air—the way it had done in Watts when the police invaded!

  The judge affirmed the death of a man of your color! Each word lashed at her, shouted itself over the sound of the vacuum cleaner. Her great, great, great grandfather struggled against the white hunters. The conquerers were not braver, no, just more cunning, meaner, crueler; they assaulted by surprise; they caged him, broke him. She saw the great man with beautiful exotic feathers from birds that flew freely only in Africa. The humming of the vacuum cleaner droned on so loudly, and her images flared so vividly that she did not notice, until the vacuum cleaner almost touched the bare feet, that a woman stood there, a strange youngwoman with strange dark eyes staring at her.

  Hester pulled back the vacuum cleaner, halting its sound. She looked at the woman. It was Tessa. “Miss Tessa.”

  “Hes-ter.” The youngwoman seemed to have trouble pronouncing the name.

  Where have yo
u— …? Oh, no. “Morning, Miss Tessa,” Hester said.

  Tessa frowned. Her eyes seemed outlined in blackness, but not with paint. Pain. She stood there, just stood there barefooted.

  The way her mother had stood earlier, Hester thought.

  Hilde was standing like a prison guard before the girl, forbidding her to move farther. Tessa looked lost.

  “Mrs. Stephens!” Hilde called.

  “Don't,” Tessa pled. “Please.” She put her finger to her lips, to soften the voice.

  “Mrs. Stephens!”

  Tessa covered her ears.

  Mrs. Stephens appeared. “Tessa, darling. Where were you going, darling?”

  The woman and her older daughter stared at each other.

  “Nowhere.”

  “Where are your shoes, dear?”

  “Oh—uh—I don't— … Upstairs! I'll get them.”

  “Where were you going, darling!”

  “Just outside.”

  “Linda's out there.”

  “Oh!” Tessa began to retreat.

  And so she can't go out because that harlot is out there. Hester pulled her lips in.

  “Got on vith your cleanung!” Hilde told Hester.

  Get—not got! Hester turned the vacuum on to the highest level, deliberately devouring the raised voices. She saw Mrs. Stephens's mouth moving. Tessa stood before her. Then the youngwoman walked barefooted into the patio and stood staring at her sister. Linda removed the sunglasses and sat up, looking back at the dark girl. The two sisters and their mother formed a triangle overlooked by Hilde.

  Lowering her head as if to charge, but also to disguise the deliberateness of her act, Hester roared the vacuum cleaner toward Hilde. She cleaned and cleaned and cleaned there until she had managed to raise a cloud of dust or smoke right at Hilde's feet. Flames, fire, flames! Hilde backed off, aghast. Hester sailed away in a curve with the vacuum cleaner. Hilde marched into the depths of the house.