What Gets Into Us

Pipe Smoke

Pipe Smoke Sidney Byrd, 1986 I have met up with Lily at Pauline's grave, out in the country. Lily has invited me over, so I go, happyto see her after all these years.I think she means me no harm. She takes out her mother's best china, makes hot tea with lemon, and her parents, whom she is visiting, are at the drugstore, where they always are. She lets it steep, pours my cup. Atthe sight ofthat, her serving me, I think, well, the time has finally come when Lily and I can talk as if there had been one life in that town in those days, and not two,the one at the front door and the one at the back. But soon I learn. We do talk about Pauline for a while, how good she was. She was my best friend in the world. Then, second cup, Lily has a story to tell. One day recently, since she has been living in big Washington, which she calls "DeeCee," she was driving in a small town inVirginia . This is for her job. She works at a newspaper. She passed by a cemetery with white crushed oyster shell paths. And all of a sudden she sees Cheryl Ann Sender that dayher daddy was buried. "Remember?" she says. "Overin the cemetery onSycamore?" 124 PIPE SMOKE 125 I have alwayshoped I would forget that day.I have gone whole years not thinking about it. Then, Lily says, she was a little girl again, back in that den ofMr. Sender's, in his big lap, him with his mouth all over her face, his thick hands tearing off her clothes. The smell of pipe smoke came right in the car in Virginia. She ended up going off the road. She cried. Forhours she couldn't drive. Then Lily says, "Well, Sidney?" "What?" I ask. I have never heard Lily was with him the day he died. The story was, it was a gun accident, but I know the truth, that it was a suicide. I know because I cleaned up after it. It still turns my stomach to think about thatday. "Did it happen?" Lily asks. In a voice so small I can hardly believe. As if she were eleven years old, instead of thirty-some. "If you say so," Isay. "He called me CherylAnn," Lily says. "Then Pauline came in. I remember." Lily pauses. She is going into my eyes, I can't get her to stop. I have to look away. "Butwhat happened next?" For almost a minute we look at each other. Cheryl Ann comes into my mind. I have not thought of her in years. Her pointy shoulders, her white skin, the wayher breasts made her top heavy, look like she might fall forward any minute. I wasn't there to see it when it was going on—I was working for the McKenziespart of that time—but her father messed with her from the time shewas nine. I found this out from the notes he wrote, when Mrs.Olive forced me into cleaning up before the coroner came. He said he had a right to Cheryl,because she was his first. His, he owned her. All of her, her soul. That was love. This is what he wrote down. I try to change the subject. Didn't Cheryl Ann move to Paris, France? Lily says she heard the same—Cheryl went over as an au pair. "Like a maid," she says. 126 PIPE SMOKE I wonder why that girl would want to look after some other woman's children. The new movie at the Paramount was made in Paris, I say I have heard. Has Lily been to the Paramount lately? I ask. But Lily says, "What did Cheryl's mother know? Mrs. Olive?" I say white women back then always lied, it was 'bout all they did. And it was a long time ago,before people said everything. It is the 19805 now. Everybody talks now. She probably lied to herself, or pretended. Lily's eyes lower a little at that. Like she don't like my answer. Well, she wants the truth, she better be readyfor it, I think. I remember Pauline just quit taking care of Lily after Mr. Sender died. That verynext week. She never explained to me.Now it occurs to me it was because he bothered Lily. Maybe...