Silver Sparrow Read Online Free Page B

with the scent of the solid perfume he had given her; if he recognized it, he didn’t say.
    “Tel me about yourself,” he said.
    “I don’t know,” Mother said. “I don’t know what to say.”
    “You can say whatever you want.”
    It was strangely comforting to talk to the back of his head like this. It was what she imagined talking to a priest would be like. Wil ie Mae went into the confessional every week. Mother was tempted to join her, but she didn’t want to have to pretend to be Catholic. She didn’t like to lie.
    “I was born here in Atlanta. I used to be married, but I’m not married anymore.” He didn’t say anything, so she kept talking.
    “I’m twenty years old. Did I tel you my name? It’s Gwendolyn, but people just cal me Gwen. Oh, I don’t know what else to say. I never knew my mother. And I didn’t march with Dr. King. I went to Spelman to see him lie in state, but the line was so long and I had to go to work. I live in a rooming house because I don’t have a lot of money.”
    He kept driving, but my mother didn’t say anything else. She wanted to get out of the car. That would be the good thing about talking to a priest, how you said what you had to say and then you got to leave. But she was trapped here in this Cadil ac, getting sick from the smel of her own perfume. “I think I’m ready to go now.”
    Without turning toward her, James said, “B-but we didn’t have coffee yet.”
    “I don’t feel wel .”
    “I know that I’m married,” James said. “I am not asking you to do anything that would make you feel low. I just want to have coffee with you. I have never b-b-been out for coffee or for dinner with a woman be-before.”
    “Except your wife,” Mother said, regretting immediately the note of sarcasm in her voice. “It’s not my business. Sorry.”
    “N-n-not even with her,” he said with a sadness that was palpable. “It’s a long story.”
    “My life is a long story,” my mother said.
    “Mine, too,” said my father.
    Then they both chuckled that the conversation had come round again. She imagined it like a circle, a child’s bal , or even the whole world.
    And this is how it started. Just with coffee and the exchange of their long stories. Love can be incremental. Predicaments, too. Coffee can start a life just as it can start a day. This was the meeting of two people who were destined to love from before they were born, from before they made choices that would complicate their lives. This love just rol ed toward my mother as though she were standing at the bottom of a steep hil . Mother had no hand in this, only heart.

    3
    NOTES ON PRECOCITY
    EVEN THOUGH MY FATHER was a bit on the short side and wore glasses thick as a slice of Wonder bread, there was an uprightness about him that inspired a brand of respect. Even after everything that happened, he never lost this. Much of the esteem he enjoyed had to do with being profiled as a local entrepreneur once in the
Atlanta Journal
and twice in the
Daily World.
Witherspoon Sedans was a smal fleet — three cars and two drivers: himself and Raleigh Arrington, his adopted brother and best friend. I could probably count the times that I have seen my father dressed like a regular person and not like a driver. There was no shame in it, however. After al , he was his own boss. When you have to wear dress blues and a hat and you work for white people, you’re wearing a costume. You’re no better than the monkey decked out in a red jacket with gold braiding. But when it’s your own company and you picked the uniform yourself out of a catalog, when it was ordered in just your size and didn’t need to be hemmed or let out, wel , that was different.
    It’s no coincidence that he was wearing his uniform when my mother met him that famous afternoon in Davison’s. It’s remarkable, the way he seems almost fused with his clothing. It made him more confident, and when he was confident he stuttered less. And when he stuttered