gun.
Fish would go days without speaking to her. For a while he wouldn’t eat anything she prepared. The daughters had to bring him casseroles of food and spoon-feed him.
Once, while Tass was outside sweeping dead leaves from the sidewalk, Fish hobbled to the door and locked it. Through the window she could see him sitting in the kitchen, stone-faced and staring. It was nearly dark when one of the children happened to drive by and saw Tass waiting there on the porch. After that incident, Tass had an extra key made which she hid beneath a smiling gnome in the front garden.
The worst act of insolence took place on a crisp, April morning. Fish was sitting at the kitchen table, wrapped in his thick green house robe. The radiators were clanging and whistling as Tass stood at the stove preparing his breakfast.
Fish had been hearing things. Whispers, giggles, feet scrambling up and down the staircase, doors opening and closing, the squeal of bedsprings. He assumed that Tass was slipping men into the house after she put him to bed.
Of course, that was absolutely untrue as Tass was completely devoted to Fish.
Let me explain why he was hearing these things. I know you are familiar with the adage: Once a man, twice a child. The words hold more truth than many of you will believe. Remember when I told you that little children are able to see the spirits around them? Well, when a soul begins to slip from the binds of the physical world, the consciousness reverts to its natural state and once again it becomes open and receptive to the spirits that live amongst the host body. For some, the transition has been problematic, which has led to sane people being medicated or institutionalized.
This particular morning, Fish slammed his fist against the table and barked, “You better not be bringing no niggers in my house!”
“Uh-huh,” Tass sounded, and kept right on whipping the eggs and turning the bacon.
“What type of woman is you? Imagine, at your age picking up a Jody, and after all I done for you!”
She had grown used to the accusations. It was becoming as customary as her morning cup of coffee.
“You hear me talking to you, Tass?” Again, he brought his fist down hard onto the table.
“Uh-huh,” Tass said absently.
Fish was suddenly seized with a pure and toxic rage that propelled his frail body from his chair, into the air, and onto Tass’s back. They went down like anchors, tossed into the sea.
On the floor they battled like hellions, until Tass was finally able to free herself and jump to her feet. Backing away from him, she reached for the knife lying in the sink.
“Nigger, don’t you ever put your hands on her again. Don’t you know I will kill you?”
Not her words, but his. Not her voice, his voice.
In that moment, Emmett discovered that his love for Tass far exceeded the power to manipulate butterflies, flowers, and birds.
The color drained from Fish’s face and the knife slipped from Tass’s hand and clattered back into the sink. Husband and wife stared at one another in astonishment, before cautiously casting their gazes around the room.
As far as they could tell, they were alone.
Tass thought it was an oddity, like a person born with one blue eye and one brown eye, or poor black people hitting the lottery two drawings in a row. There was no other way to explain it.
After the moment had passed, Tass reached down to help Fish to his feet, but he was spooked and scrambled across the yellow and brown linoleum with the agility and speed of a lizard.
“Don’t touch me,” he slurred through his crooked lips.
“Don’t be silly,” Tass said as she reached for him again.
Fish batted her hands away. “Get off me, you possessed bitch!”
Tass reeled back in surprise. Even during their most horrendous disagreements, Fish had never called her out of her name.
Months after that incident, Tass was in the basement one morning, loading the washing machine with clothes. Fish was in the kitchen finishing his breakfast, excited about the day he and the family were going to spend on Belle Isle. He was eager to see the boats coasting across the water with their white sails flapping in the wind.
He was smiling at the thought when death closed its dark hand over his heart.
Downstairs, the roar of the washing machine masked the sound of Fish’s body tumbling from the chair to the floor. So when Tass stepped into the sun-drenched kitchen and saw him stretched out with his good hand clutched to his chest, her heart jumped into her throat.
His eyes were open and a glistening stream of saliva spilled ominously from the corner of his mouth. He was still smiling, not because of the vision he’d conjured of Belle Isle, but because his people were there. All of the family and friends who had transitioned ahead of him had encircled him, and were weaving his name into an ancient chant.
Fish’s foot began to bounce to the rhythm of the song, and he was consumed by a tenderness he had never felt before.
Standing just outside of the circle of ancestors was a person who Fish did not recognize. “Who you?” he asked.
Tass was now on the floor cradling his head in her lap, stroking his cheeks and weeping all over him. “It’s me, baby. Tass.”
His head lolled to one side and he was gone.
Tass sat there for a long time, holding him, stroking his arms and running her fingers through his hair.
She didn’t know how long the telephone had been ringing before she finally heard it. Pulling herself up from the floor and carefully stepping around Fish’s body, she picked up the receiver.
“Hello?” Tass sniffed.
“Hey, Mama,” Sonny’s voice rang from the opposite end of the line. “I’m headed over now. Y’all ready?”
Pulling the coiled telephone cord as far as it would allow, she stepped out into the hallway, cupped her hand over mouth, and whispered, “He gone, Sonny, he gone,” as if trying to keep the truth from the dead man himself.
Other than the sound of the clock and Tass’s own steady breathing, the house was quiet. The funeral had ended hours ago, but Tass was still dressed in her black skirt suit and pillbox hat with the studded veil. Sitting on the corner of the bed, she leaned forward and folded her hands into her lap. For a long time she just sat there staring at her hands, contemplating the soft wrinkles and brown blemishes. How smooth and pretty her skin had been when she said, I do, forty-eight years earlier.
“Forty-eight years,” she said aloud.
Now, looking back, she realized that forty-eight years had run off like water.
“Not when we were living it though,” Tass chuckled.
