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Patsy always dresses in the dark since she never looks in mirrors, is unimpressed with what she catches glimpses of: an average moon-shaped face, broad nose, full, down-turned lips, the way a child looks who has lost something, save for the perpetual deepened dimples in each cheek.
She focuses on the man’s color, amazed how white people can change color in an instant.
And while people would pardon convicts, drunks, and men who fuck goats, cows, dogs, and children, they are suspicious, almost terrified, of a woman without a family and no religion. Jesus is the only viable excuse a young woman can use to deny the penis.
Though sex with boys was horrid, daunting, and a little demeaning, with no warmth, no closeness, no pleasure, she got used to it. It was attention she got,
Patsy’s tears come when she sees the soft trust in her daughter’s eyes dim. That lingering trust might have been the kerosene flame playing tricks on her. When she blinks again, it’s completely gone.
“If you insist on wasting we food then yuh bettah ask yuh mother fah every ounce a penny she earn fi pay we back. Keeping you here not cheap.” “Roy, yuh can’t say dat to di child,” Marva says. “Then how else she g’wan understand dat we doing har a favor?” he hisses.
But more than the name itself is the irony—to come to a place with so much freedom, only to take care of another child.
Who does she think she is to come to a white man’s country, expecting to walk into their positions without crawling first?
“A woman can’t survive without a man anywhere, Patsy,” Cicely says. “Not even in America. A man like Marcus mek all dis possible.” Cicely gestures at the space around them with her hands.
The hurt she saw in Patsy’s eyes lashes her—more painful than Marcus’s abuse. Regret almost chokes her when she remembers what Patsy did, what she sacrificed, her quiet willingness to suffer on Cicely’s behalf. A lifetime of love and friendship lost tonight in Cicely’s effort to defend the prison she has built for herself.
and Patsy, who had previously felt she was circling the world on a wind outside herself, came, pouring her soul into Cicely’s. Patsy had never felt life bursting inside her like that, hyper-aware of the sun, the earth, the grass beneath them; of herself buried between Cicely’s legs, rapt.
Knowing that she is fully capable of feeling such visceral disgust for herself fills her with purpose, a drive to get on with it, gather the scattered pieces inside herself, and get her life back.
It’s one thing to leave, but it’s another thing to call and hang up and keep silent. Patsy has sinned against her daughter. A sin that could be hard to forgive. And the darkness of this sin is like the darkness of the dawn outside. Or the one standing to the left of her, waiting.
Every time someone walks away she feels a sting of desperation in her eyes. She blinks away the wet veil, almost uttering the word Please at the young couple holding hands.
There’s that word again that Patsy hates—illegal. She’s no longer a person, but an illegal. An alien. She can’t understand why she’s deemed a criminal for wanting more, for being in a place where she can live out her dreams—even if it might take a while to achieve them.
Said her parents hired American blacks back in Georgia, but then they began to ask for “too much.” Patsy didn’t ask what that meant, but somehow that “too much” stayed with her, incited her to go above and beyond—even staying later than usual to scrub crayon stains off a whole wall inside a grandmother’s apartment. She didn’t tip Patsy. And Patsy knew better than to ask.
reminds Patsy of the rush she once felt as a teenager when she put her hand over a candlelight flame confirming that she was real, alive; that the burning she felt somewhere inside was as absolute as the one out there, burning her skin.
