yet couldn’t gain that Floyd-Graham-rock-solid certainty. She watched with a mixture of wonderment and trepidation as Johnny ate regular, never got sick, learned to walk, and grew like he was supposed to. Best of all, he loved his mother and knew how to show it. That especially was a comfort. Of course Hazel loved him, too, but love took its toll. Hazel’s stabbing anxiety dulled to a constant dread.
Not long after Johnny’s first birthday, Floyd talked her into getting pregnant again. He figured that with two children she wouldn’t have time to fret over things that didn’t matter. Another child would help prioritize her thinking, he advised.
Hazel did as Floyd asked. She got pregnant and had another boy, Davie. She memorized more sayings. She recited them to her children like nursery rhymes. As much as she tried changing her thinking, she couldn’t get over feeling that she had only the loosest of handholds on the caboose of Floyd’s speeding train of success.
Chapter Eight
UP TO THE BIG HOUSE
Even though she couldn’t find her voice to say it, Hazel figured their entire cottage could easily fit into this one room, and she was not alone in reverential silence. She and Floyd turned slowly in the middle of the empty parlor and neither spoke, as if a house this grand might not want to carry voices as common as their own. That the house was now theirs may have been a reality on paper, yet this minute, as they gawked openmouthed, that truth felt as hollow as the cavernous rooms themselves.
“Well, punkin,” Floyd said, whispering for a reason unknown to him, “it took me six years to keep my promise. But I did it. I got you out of that slave cabin and put you up on the hill.”
He looked at her with that sweet expression she remembered from before they married. It was the way he looked at her over ice cream during that magical month of planning their escape.
“You proud of me?” he asked.
The question comforted Hazel. He still cared what she thought. “I’m real proud, Floyd,” she whispered back. “It’s a dream come true.”
Floyd stood a little straighter. “Like I always say,” his voice stronger now, “success is a dream with sweat on it.” He spoke the last part loud enough to send the saying echoing lightly off the walls. He must have approved of the way it sounded, because he said it again, louder. “Success is a dream with sweat on it,” he shouted, and smiled at Hazel proudly as his voice rang throughout the house.
Hazel smiled weakly. There was no doubt about it. Floyd had been sweating big time. He broke all records selling farm implements, single-handedly putting enough machinery into operation to free up thousands of field hands. He had been such a standout that the Senator convinced his brother-in-law, the president of the bank, to loan Floyd the money to start Delphi Motors. The Senator had taken a liking to Floyd.
On one occasion, the Senator had slapped Floyd on the back and said that already, with nothing more than a few well-turned phrases and that shit-eating grin of his, Floyd had changed the Delta landscape more than Ulysses Grant had during the invasion. Floyd had replaced the primitive hollers of the coloreds with the smooth hum of machinery. The Senator said there was no telling how far Floyd could go if he was his own boss. Now, thanks to the Senator—plus Floyd’s positive thinking, of course—he was selling Mercurys and Lincolns and Ford trucks out of a business he ran himself.
While the boys scampered through the house, making their bare feet screech against the slick hardwood floors, Hazel stood there holding fast to Floyd, the same way she had that late afternoon when he showed her what lay beyond the bluffs and she struggled to make sense of it all.
The walls around her were the pinkish color of mimosa blossoms, and all along their length were the empty, lighter spaces where portraits of the previous owner’s ancestors had hung. It occurred to Hazel that it might be easier living with the ghosts of slaves than of rich people.
“How we going to fill it up, just the four of us?” she asked. “This house got rooms I don’t even know the names of.”
“That’s why I’m taking you to Greenwood. So you can outfit this house with the grandest things you can find. Like I always say, ‘If you want to attract money, you got to smell like money.’ ”
Choosing the curtains for the little slave cabin had stretched Hazel’s imagination to the limit, but this assignment made her head swim. She had no idea how rich folks went about filling up their homes, never having been inside a house this grand before.
“Now, I mean it,” Floyd said. “When we go to Greenwood, buy only deluxe. We got an image now.” His eyes narrowed. “Oh, that reminds me.”
Hazel braced herself. She could feel one of Floyd’s “lists for success” coming on.
“You got to stop tussling with Johnny and Davie in the yard right out in plain view. I’ll find you a colored girl to watch them. And another thing, don’t let the boys go out the house looking like Indians. Put shirts and shoes on them. Even in summertime. We ain’t in the hills no more. People are going to be watching us close now.”
Stamping like horses, Johnny and Davie, half naked and already brown as berries, their feet stained green with spring grass, giddyupped into the sitting room. Hazel got that old sinking feeling again in her chest. A good mother would have known better. This was supposed to be getting easier, she thought. Lurleen and Onareen turned out children like canned tomatoes and never seemed to give being a mother a second thought.
With his arms outstretched, his frail blue eyes pleading, Davie bounced up and down at his father’s feet, calling out, “Catch me! Catch me!”
Floyd lifted his son off the ground and threw him into the air, making Davie gurgle with laughter. At the peak of his rise, Davie yelled out, “Catch me!”
Hazel clutched herself. She hated this game.
Johnny noticed his mother’s dread. “Daddy, you be careful. Don’t drop Davie on his head.”
Hazel smiled sadly at Johnny, relieved yet at the same time a little ashamed that he had been the one to speak out.
“We just having some fun. No harm done.” Floyd set Davie down on the floor and then turned to Johnny. “Hey, Little Monkey. You wanna go next?” he asked, holding out his arms. Johnny took two steps backward.
Rebuffed, Floyd returned his attention to his wife. “Now, like I was saying, you got to help me, Hazel. We’re building us up a reputation. This house is only the start of it.”
Nodding her agreement, she looked up into his confident face. Floyd was already acting as if he had been born and bred in this house, when only a few minutes ago he was asking like a child if she was proud of him. It amazed her how things came so natural to him, in the way raising babies came natural to her sisters.
Floyd unveiled the next item on his list. “I think it’s time you learned to drive.”
Hazel’s mouth dropped open. “You gonna teach me, Floyd?” she asked, not believing her ears. She had always assumed that driving was beyond her, mainly because Floyd had never suggested it before.
“That
