CHAPTER ONE HOSPITAL
CHAPTER
ONE
Hospital
The hurricane didn’t pass until early morning.
Roscoe checked the state of things when it was safe to go out, and apart from fallen branches and the power lines being knocked out, it hadn’t done much damage.
He reported back to Momma North that everything was fine, and made sure she didn’t need him to do anything, before collapsing into his bed for a rest.
Ever since Cora had left, things between him and Momma North had been strained. She never asked what happened, but she let him know she blamed him for not going out and getting Cora to come back. If she knew the truth, she’d probably throw him out on his ear.
He drifted off to sleep and woke later to someone knocking on the door. He pulled the pillow over his head, and seconds later heard an excited cry from Momma North. He was up in an instant and out of his room. When he rounded the corner, he saw Benny stepping inside.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Momma North said, flinging her arms around his neck and holding on to him, like she meant to keep him there forever.
‘No one’s going to notice me after that hurricane. Folks are worrying about themselves today.’
Roscoe crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. ‘Look who’s come to slum it with the colored folks. I’m surprised you remember how to get here, all the way from your neighborhood.’
‘Cut that out,’ Momma North said. ‘Benny’s my son. He’s always welcome in my home.’
Roscoe felt the dig. This place wasn’t his. It was hers. He flushed but didn’t back down. ‘Better be careful no one spots you. People might start thinking you’re one of us.’
‘I’m not here to fight with you, Roscoe,’ Benny said. ‘I did what I did. It had nothing to do with you.’
‘No, you just let me marry your sister for security so that you’d be free to desert everybody.’
He pinned Roscoe with a hard stare. ‘You may have married her, but you stepped away just as fast.’
Roscoe’s eyes widened in surprise. If he knew that, he’d been talking to Cora and probably knew why she’d left. He straightened from the wall.
‘What do you mean, he stepped away?’ Momma North said.
Benny shook off her question. ‘That’s not why I came here,’ he said, looking at Roscoe. He turned to his momma. ‘Cora’s in the hospital.’
Her shocked pause gave way to action. ‘What happened?’ she said, already dashing to the kitchen for her handbag.
‘She had glass in her feet. She’s going to be fine.’
‘Glass?’ She tucked her bag under her arm and plucked her coat from the hook.
‘It’s Lee who’s in bad shape. Some crackers got hold of him and dragged him through the streets until the storm stopped them.’
She clutched her bag and her coat, looking fragile, like the years were catching up with her. ‘What do you mean dragged?’
Roscoe had a sick feeling that dragged meant what it sounded like.
‘They tied him to their truck.’
‘Bastards,’ Roscoe said.
‘White folks are the Devil himself,’ Momma North said.
Benny colored red. ‘Momma, it’s not everyone who’s like that,’ he said, his voice quiet. ‘There are good—’
‘Your sister is in the hospital,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘Your daddy is dead. They dragged your friend through the street, they burned down our house. Don’t you stand here and defend them.’
Benny kept his face rigid and guarded as they piled into his car and sped to the hospital. There they found Patsy in her nurse’s uniform talking to Cora and Uncle Drew, sitting beside each other in waiting-room chairs. Cora’s feet were wrapped in bandages.
‘Shouldn’t you be in bed?’ Roscoe said, when he saw the state of her. He didn’t mean for it to come out so harsh.
She broke off her conversation and looked at the three of them.
‘They’re discharging me,’ she said, which answered his question, but she directed her words at Momma North, not even acknowledging him. ‘We’re worried about Lee, though. They operated, but he’s not waking up.’
She looked a mess. Haunted eyes and wild hair and a nervous energy that made Roscoe want to shake her still.
‘He protected his vital organs with his catcher’s guard,’ Patsy explained, ‘but the dragging dislocated his shoulders, shattered his hip and knees and scraped through skin and muscle to the bone.’
Cora’s red eyes welled up as she spoke, and Benny sat beside her, sliding his arm around her for comfort.
‘Now would be a good time for you and your church friends to pray,’ Uncle Drew said to Momma North.
‘You should go home,’ Patsy said to Benny. ‘You know you shouldn’t be at the colored hospital, and there’s nothing you can do for him anyways.’
‘Okay,’ Benny said. He rose and turned to Cora. ‘If you’re checked out, I can take you home to rest.’
Cora shook her head. ‘The lean-to burned down. Besides, I’m not leaving Lee.’
Tension simmered in the air.
‘That’s not your home,’ Momma North said. ‘You need to come back where you belong now.’
Cora shook her head and looked to Benny for support. He glared at Roscoe. ‘You can stay with Patsy and Aunt Teen,’ Benny said. He turned to Patsy. ‘She can, can’t she?’
No one said the obvious – that she couldn’t stay with him.
Patsy looked confused. ‘Well, sure she can, but—’ She glanced from Benny to Cora to Momma North to Roscoe, asking with her eyes why Cora wouldn’t just go home. She got only blank, stony faces for an answer. ‘We could make up a bed on the couch.’
‘This has gone on long enough,’ Momma North said. ‘It’s time for you to get home, Cora.’
‘Momma, give her time,’ Benny said.
‘No, Benny. There’s a price for what she’s been doing. First those articles, then staying out day and night running wild in the streets. That reckless, godless man has landed her in the hospital, and we can thank God it isn’t worse for her.’
‘Now hang on, Janie. I’m not going to let you lay this at Lee’s feet,’ Uncle Drew said.
‘Just come home and let’s talk about it,’ Roscoe said to Cora.
‘You think I’m coming back with you after what you did?’
He didn’t know if she meant Megan or losing his temper. Either way her eyes blazed with a fire that told him more than weeks of her absence did.
‘What did he do?’ Momma North asked.
‘What’s going on?’ Patsy said.
‘After what I did? Look at where we are because of you,’ Roscoe said, ignoring them. ‘Lee might not even make it.’ He stepped in closer and lowered his voice. ‘And people are going to talk.’
‘Then let them,’ she said. ‘I worried over what folks would say about me and Lee for way too long.’
‘Hush now,’ Momma said, trying to shush her. ‘You’re a married woman. You can’t be talking like that.’
‘I am not leaving Lee, and I don’t care what anyone thinks about it.’
‘Maybe you should just go home,’ Benny said. ‘Talk it through.’
Cora whipped around to him and lashed out with a venomous force. ‘You don’t get to dip in and out of this whenever you want with your two cents, like Moses coming off his mountain. You lost your say when you left.’
‘Damn it, Cora. If those men had gotten their hands on you that’d be you in there, but worse.’ He turned on Roscoe, his finger jabbing. ‘I can’t believe you let this happen. I trusted her to you.’
Roscoe took in his jabbing finger and his entitled face, twisted in self-righteous outrage, looking every bit the white man. ‘Tell me, Benny,’ he said, with iron-hard anger, ‘what else do you want me to do for your family, now that you’re living over in Levittown?’
‘Be quiet,’ Momma hissed.
‘Oh, no,’ Benny said. ‘I want to hear this, because last I checked, you’re living in my momma’s house, not taking care of anybody.’
‘And who are you looking out for, Benny? ’Cause it’s not your momma. It’s not your sister. And it sure isn’t me.’
‘You?’ Benny spat, incredulous.
Roscoe felt it like the sting of a sapling switch on bare legs. He stepped back, put his hand out to touch a chair, feel something solid. ‘You were like a brother to me,’ Roscoe said. ‘I would have done anything for you.’ He pointed to Cora. ‘I did this for you.’
‘That was your idea. I didn’t make you do it.’
Roscoe barked out a dry, angry laugh. ‘When you turn your back, you turn it good and hard,’ he said. ‘You had me fooled, but I can see the real, bright-white Benny now.’
‘What I did can help all of us. Just think of what I could do for you like this.’
‘Living over in Levittown in your cotton-wool life? What have you done for any of us since you’ve been back?’ He flung his words at Benny, razor sharp and rock hard, and Benny flinched, like he felt the blow.
‘Man, they already have you brainwashed,’ Roscoe said, pushing too far and not far enough. ‘Thinking your cushy life is better for us.’
‘I just meant—’
‘Nobody wants your white-man handouts. Tell your new friends to get off my neck and I’ll do for myself.’
He turned and strode away, walking the fifteen miles back to a place that definitely wasn’t home.