The Fan Was Already On

The house had a sound to it, and I kept it that way on purpose.

Record player in the front room, most days. Fan in the kitchen window, always. Radio in the back where Marian used to do her hair. If you came up on my porch any hour God sent, you’d hear something before you heard me. That was the house. Folks thought I liked noise. Folks thought a lot of things.

There was a woman at Second Baptist, Miss Ruthie, she asked me once why I had that fan going during the freeze. I told her the kitchen held heat. She said, Delphine, it’s thirty-one degrees outside. I said the kitchen held heat.

She let it go. Most people let it go. That’s the mercy of being an old woman. You can say a foolish thing with a straight face and folks will hand it back to you gentle and go on about their business.

The fan was already on.

That’s the part I want to set down, because I never said it to a living soul and I have carried it a long time. The fan was already on before the question came. It was on during the freeze. It was on at four in the morning when there was nobody in that kitchen but me and my hands. It was on the day Alaric turned eleven and it was on the day I buried my husband and it was on the whole month Marian didn’t speak to me.

I would sit at that table with my Bible open and my eyes open and the hum coming up off that window, and I would not be praying for anything. I would be praying against the quiet.

Because in the quiet there was a voice, and it was low, and it was patient, and it had been patient for a long time.

I never once told you what it said.

I’ll tell you what I did instead. When it got close, I got up. I put a plate together for somebody who didn’t need one and I walked it four blocks in the heat. I turned that fan a quarter to the left and I stood there with my hand still on it longer than a woman needs to. I sang, loud, in a house with nobody in it. I found something to scrub that was already clean.

The boy would come in sometimes while I was doing it.

He’d stand in the doorway with his shoes in his hand and he’d tilt his head, and his eyes would go somewhere off my left shoulder, and he’d hold there. Just a second. Then he’d come in and ask me was there any of that cornbread left, and I’d say yes baby, and I’d get it for him, and my hands would be steady because I made them be steady.

He tilted his head.

He was eight years old and he tilted his head at the same nothing I was drowning out.

I turned that fan up. Not a quarter. All the way.

Then I said, Alaric, come here and let me look at you, and he came, and I put both hands on his face and I looked at him the way you look at a thing you already know you’re going to lose, and I said, you hungry? and he said yes ma’am, and I fed him.

That’s what I did. That’s what I did every time.

Miss Ruthie asked why I kept the fan on during the freeze.

The kitchen held heat.