Perfect Peace by Daniel Black Page B

constantly whose child she wasn’t.
    To Emma Jean’s chagrin, Claude Lovejoy appeared one day out of nowhere. The girls turned and there he was. Emma Jean was almost nine.
    “Howdy, y’all,” he said kindly.
    As though spooked, Pearlie and Gracie ran into the house, screaming, “Momma, Momma! That man’s back! He’s here!”
    “Who’s here?” Mae Helen asked, walking onto the porch. When she saw who it was, she sucked her teeth and said, “Aw, shit! That ain’t nobody. I thought y’all was talkin’ ’bout somebody important,” and walked back into the house, allowing the screen to slam behind her.
    Emma Jean lingered only because Claude was staring at her.
    “You’s real pretty, honey. Black and beautiful jes’ like my momma. Yourname’s Emma Jean Lovejoy, ain’t it?” He smiled and sat on the edge of the porch. “You my baby girl.”
    “My name’s Emma Jean
Hurt
,” she corrected nastily, “and if you is my daddy, you a sorry one ’cause I ain’t never seen you in my whole life.”
    Claude’s smile vanished. “I been workin’ on de railroad, baby. I wanted to come see you, but seem like every time I got a day off, I was either dog tired or called back to work. I thinks about you all de time, sugar. Really I do. Don’t chu neva think yo’ daddy don’t love you.”
    Emma Jean almost jumped into his arms, but restrained herself. “Okay,” she said.
    “I wanna take you to meet my folks so you know yo’ people. They’ll like you right off, pretty as you is.”
    “No, thank you.”
    “What chu mean, ‘no thank you’? Don’t chu wanna know yo’ family?”
    Emma Jean heard the disappointment in her father’s flat voice, but her pride outweighed her empathy. “I already know my family,” she sassed, “so you can jes’ tell all dem bottom folks that I’m fine right where I am.”
    Claude shook his head. “What’s wrong, baby? You actin’ like you hate me or somethin’.”
    “Ain’t nothin’ wrong wit’ me. I jes’ don’t wanna go with you down in dem Bottoms. I don’t wanna go wit’ chu nowhere, so you ain’t gotta come back here no more if you don’t want to.” She turned to walk away.
    Claude stood. “I don’t know what you done heard ’bout me, but I’s a good man and you got a whole heap o’ folks jes’ waitin’ to love you ’cause you mine.”
    “No I don’t!”
    “It’s fine though ’cause you can’t run from yo’self. Don’t care how hard you try, when you turn around, that self is starin’ back at you. You’s a Lovejoy, baby, and you gone stay one ’til de day you die. I jes’ hope I’m still livin’ when you come to yo’ senses. Yo’ momma and everybody else ’round hyeah done told you a bunch o’ mess ’bout me and my folks, but one day you’ll know de truth.” He wiped his eyes and left.
    For a second, the thought of being shown off like a prize excited Emma Jean, yet fearful of her sisters’ ridicule, she decided to let Claude Lovejoy go.
    Mae Helen returned to the porch. “Why didn’t you go with him? You coulda gone if you wanted to.”
    “I jes’ didn’t,” Emma Jean mumbled.
    “Well, you shoulda. You need to know yo’ people. You look jes’ like ’em.”
    Emma Jean had hoped Mae Helen would say,
Oh, honey, I was so scared you was gon’ leave me. Thank God I still got my baby
, or something like that. Instead, she told Gracie and Pearlie, “Ump, ump, ump. Y’all almost had a bed to y’allself.”
    For the rest of her life, her mother’s words lived in her head. Even in her dreams, she heard,
Y’all almost had a bed to y’allself, y’all almost had a bed to y’allself, y’all almost had a bed to y’allself
, as though someone were trying to convince her of her own selfishness.
    By sixteen, Emma Jean was praying for Claude’s return. She promised herself that, if he came again, she’d accompany him to the Bottoms and wouldn’t care what Gracie or Pearlie or anyone else said. She might not even come