Thrown-away Child

final chapters of a paperback novel with a cover that featured a chesty, goldenhaired maiden in the middle of a jungle wearing lipstick and an off-the-shoulder blouse and being tenderly ravished by a golden-haired muscleman wearing a leopard print loincloth. Violet dropped the book to the floor and shut her eyes.
    Like most nights before drifting off, she saw Willis in her sleepy mind, and remembered the early days and being young with him.
    She remembered especially the cottage in the lane, and a long-ago day when she and Willis fought about Zeb Tilton and Hassie Pinkney and the mysteries.
    And then later, when they sweetly resolved their differences.
     
    “Shoo, you scared as a tied-up billy goat. Tell your little Vi how come you be so scared, big man.” Violet’s voice grew breathy. She moved in close to her husband, pressing herself against his wide chest, straddling her own soft legs over one of his hard thighs. She whispered, “You a fine and handsome rock of a man, Willis Flagg. You my lion, hear? I’m with you, and I’m not fearing nothing or nobody. So why you scared of Zeb on me? Don’t you know it’s a sin to be scared of anybody but God?”
    Locked together in embrace, Violet and Willis sidled over to a couch where Willis was reassured about his power and his manliness. And in the tender afterwards, with their differences beside the point, Violet and Willis reminded each other of their love and their pride in how far they had come as a yard man and a cleaning woman.
     
    She remembered, too, how her lion thrilled her so when he took heed of words she had put in his heart— Don’t you know it’s a sin to be scared of anybody but God? When he dared to face down Zeb Tilton the day their pride was stolen.
    I’m going to figure some way to bring you down.
     
    As Willis Flagg said those angry words back in 1948, a pretty young black woman lay on her back in a grimy bed, across the river in Toby Jones’s coal yard shack, behind the Algiers Iron Works & Dry Dock Company.
    She was great with pain and misery and shame. Toby stood by her side, weeping and mumbling a Prayer. Next to him was a scowling midwife pulling a Pair of rubber gloves over her hands.
    The young woman was Rose Duclat, who had drifted back home from New York City, unbeknownst to her sister or the bald bill collector. She felt she could not call on Violet for help. And so Toby Jones had taken her in. God help him, Toby wanted Rose to become his wife.
    As a result, the midwife now pulled a squawling infant boy into the world from between Rose’s splayed legs.
    In a matter of days, Rose would disappear. Again she would head north, leaving behind her baby, and more debts.

    “Perry!”
    No answer.
    Violet called up the stairway again. “Perry—now you talk to me! I know you’re up there. I hear that damn TV set.”
    Still, there was no answer. And so Violet climbed up to the second floor, steeling herself for the sight of Perry’s room. She pushed open the door.
    Indeed, the little black-and-white portable television set with the wire coat hanger antennae was running. But no Perry. Violet shook her head. Good thing I check on him after he’s done cooking dinner, he’d burn down this place forgetting to turn off the stove before he goes off wherever he goes. She walked into the room and clicked off a TV soap opera.
    Perry’s room reeked of cigarettes. Violet wiped her nose in disgust. Tobacco companies pushing cancer on black folks, they might’s well be wearing sheets and burning crosses. The bed was a mess of pillows and blankets, books and Dixie beer cans. The cans were bent. Perry liked to crush them after drinking. Lots of other books were piled in wobbly stacks against the walls. There were drawing pads and some spiral-bound tablets on top of the dresser. And overloaded ashtrays everywhere—on the bed, the dresser, the windowsills, the floor, the nightstand.
    Violet sighed. How’s Perry live up here like this? A man so helpful about keeping things neat and clean in return for his room.
    So long as Perry was around, Violet never had to touch a broom. Of course, she had to do the shopping and bill paying. But with Perry handling dinner, she had to cook only breakfast—and lunch if she was home. This was as easy for two as it was for one. Easier, really.
    Every morning, Violet and Perry would sit down at the kitchen table together with coffee and buttered rolls and eggs and grits and the Times-Picayune. After which