“It’s great. It’s really nice. It was nice of them to get this ready for us. Nothing’s going to happen, Malcolm. We’re going to be okay now. We’re going to love each other from now on.”

“I hope so. I really hope so. I can’t take much more of this, Rhoda. I can’t take another year like the last ones.”

“Momma,” Jimmy said. “Hold me, Momma. I’m hungry. I want to eat.” I pulled his fat little happy body into my arms. I kissed his face and arms. We had been in Alexandria for an hour. Who knows, he may already have been bitten by a dozen mosquitoes.

Part Six

ALEXANDRIA

Chapter

29

Then it was spring and the town of Alexandria was heavy with the smell of Cape jasmine. Fat white flowers washed clean by rain. Rain fell nearly every afternoon in that tropical plane beside the Quachita River. Torrential rain full of salt from the Gulf of Mexico. It washed away the smell of the paper plant where Malcolm was raging away his days. The smell of jasmine and rain and the babies asleep in their beds and Klane Marengo’s brilliant black skin appearing at my door each morning on her way home from her conjugal visits to the jail.

“Hi, Klane,” I would say. “How’s it going? What’s going on?”

“I’m doing okay. How’s the baby?”

“I don’t know. He’s still asleep.”

“Was he okay last night?”

“I guess so. We had a party. God, I got so drunk. We made grasshoppers. You ever had one? Well, he slept all night. He’s still asleep.”

“You want me to stay late today?” She filled the door frame. She was six feet tall; she must have been of Watusi stock. She was the only maid I had ever had who could control Little Malcolm. In return I put up with her undependable hours and let her borrow money from me.

“You want me to stay late tonight or not?”

“Yeah, I do. You want to go home first? You could eat breakfast here and sleep awhile.”

“Nah, they’d wake me up. I’ll come back around noon. Where are they?”

“They’re still asleep. Come on in. You want some coffee?”

“I want a ride home. I don’t feel like taking no bus.”

“Okay. Come on in. I’ll take you as soon as they wake up.”

“I don’t know if I want to wait around.” She was in the kitchen now, pouring herself some coffee, looking around to see what kind of messes we’d been making. “Where’d you go last night?”

“We went over to Karla’s to make beef Stroganoff. We made grasshoppers. God, I bet I drank a million of them. You want to do the floors this afternoon? I got to get some more wax if you want to do them.”