ONCE A MAN, TWICE A CHILD

ONCE A MAN, TWICE A CHILD was originally published in Cantaravillee magazine

“Essie May! Essie May! Wake up in there!” yelled the old man, Winston K. Finley.

Winston K. Finley, with pink, blotchy skin, wore a wide-brimmed straw hat to protect his skin from the sun. His complexion was like a shadow, only in white. He walked across the front porch, which he was preparing to paint, and knocked on the front window.

“This man out here says you bought yourself a waterbed. Essie May! You bought yourself a waterbed, and you owe me thirty dollars rent money from a year ago March. I’m gonna move you out, hear?”

I was, at first, bewildered by Mr. Winston K. Finley’s presence on the dilapidated front porch in the black neighborhood. In the living room inside,the Saturday morning cartoons blared loudly.

“She complains about her ‘lectric bill, but that TV runs all the time even when she’s not watching it. I seen her walk out the house and leave it run. She coulda paid me that thirty dollars. The trouble with Essie May is that everything’s gotta be on Essie May’s terms. She’s just plain mean. This is my house, and she won’t even give me a key to the front porch so I can do this painting during the week when she’s not here. The inspector give me till Thursday to get this painted up.

“I paid a colored man to paint the house, and she won’t even let him inside the front porch. She says he’s a wino from down on the docks. Essie May! Wake up!”

A few minutes later Essie May appeared at the front door. She was a small, black woman in her fifties. Her back was slightly slumped. She had on black frame glasses that rested low on her nose. Winston K. Finley lit into her again for the thirty dollars she owed him.

“You get paid. You get paid,” she said to him. “That waterbed’s not fo’ me. It’s fo’ Papa Spoon, that eighty-five year old man inside. He lyin’ in bed, dyin’ of love.”

“Dying of love?” I asked.

I held the toolbox in one hand and an invoice for the waterbed in the other hand.

“Papa Spoon ain’t dying of love,” Winston K. Finley stated. “He had a stroke. It’s hardening of the arteries. And by the way, the lease you signed was based on one person living here. I shouldcharge you extra for Papa Spoon.”

“No, that man, he be dyin’ of love. And I’ll pay you yo’ rent money by and by.”

“Is Papa Spoon your husband?” I asked.

Essie May laughed deeply.

“Spoon ain’t no husband a mine. Hejust an old man I felt sorry fo’, and I took him in, and he going back to hischildhood. Everybody do. I’m fixin’ to go back to my

childhood too in a few years. Uh huh,” she said, nodding her head.

“I’m still in my childhood. I don’t think I’ve ever grown up,” I said.

“It’s in the Bible. It say it right in the Bible. It say: once a man, twice a child. You ever read the Bible?”

“No mam. I was brought up Catholic, and we never had to read the Bible. The Pope did all that for us. We just had to go to church on Sunday and not eat meat on Friday.”

“Uh huh. Well, Papa Spoon, he go and fall in love with a seventy-year-old woman, and he goes to visit her, and he knows what he wants, but she don’t want him botherin’ her. She even call me up and say, ‘Essie May, keep Spoon away from me,’ and it just up and popped his brain, and he back in his childhood dyin’ a love. That’s what killin’ him. He in there shriveling up like a piece of fried bacon.

​“The doctor looked at his bed sores and said, ‘that man need a waterbed.’ You ever felt like dyin’ from love?”

“Yeah. A bunch of times,” I said.

“Essie May, he’s not in his second childhood if he was out chasin’ women,” Winston K. Finley said.

“Well, I don’t know. He shore in bad shape now. There’ll be tears a rejoicin’ when he dies. This world it upside down, you know?” she said directly to me.

“Huh? It is?”

I was uncomfortable as she looked straight through me to my very essence. I felt the burning truth of her words whether I believed them or not.

“Yes sir. People, they laugh and have a good time when a baby be born, and they cry and be sad when somebody die, but the Bible, which is the word of God, say that this world be a place a sin, and to come into it is a sadness, but leavin’ it is a time for gladness and rejoicin’.”

“Essie May’s got on her Sunday manners today,” Winston K. Finley said.

“I always got on my Sunday manners. You can never know when it be your turn to go.”

“Then pay me my thirty dollars back rent before you go.”

“You get it by and by.”

“Where do you want this waterbed to go?” I interjected between the two combatants.

“In the middle room there. You all will help me move Papa Spoon on top to the waterbed when the time comes, won’t you?”

I nodded and Winston K. Finley reluctantly grunted his assent.

“Sistah? Sistah?” a gravelly voice called out.

I turned around and there was an old, black woman from a nearby house standing in Essie May’s front yard. She had on a pink bathrobe and light blue slippers.

“Right here,” Essie May said from the porch.

“You got a telephone call, Sistah.”

“Okay, I be back in a while,” she said as she walked out the front door.

“See, look at that. She walks out of the place, and the TV is blasting away. That woman sure does like her cartoons.”

“And her Bible,” I said.

A while later the bed was set up and filled with cool water. Essie May, Winston K. Finley, and I carried Papa Spoon over the unpainted plywood floors from one room to the other.

In the bathroom were toiletries, cleansers, and a can of spray paint. Papa Spoon was dressed in white hospital pajamas. There was not much left to him. His flesh had wet, seeping, bed sores on it. I was appalled at his condition yet felt strange significance to the event.

We settled Papa Spoon onto the Econo King single waterbed. His body had rigidity setting into it although he was still alive. He lay on the waterbed like it was a funeral pyre.

“There, he be more comfortable now,” Essie May said, pulling a white sheet to his shoulders.

With Papa Spoon resting she escortedus outside. A few minutes later on the front porch she hesitantly paid me in cash for the remainder owed on thewaterbed. Winston K. Finley saw her handing me cash. He put down his paintbrush.

“See! Look at that! You got that thirty dollars you owe me from a year ago March, Essie May?”

“No sir.”

“You got money to buy a waterbed but not pay your rent. I’m gonna have to move you outa here. I got two women that wanna buy this place. When I sell it to them you’ll have to move out. I’m tired of the headaches.”

“Uh huh. Well, I told one a the people I maid fo’, she’s a judge’s wife, you know, that you was tryin’ to move me out ‘cause I owed you thirty dollars. She told me, if you sell the place, to stop paying my one hundred twenty -five dollars a month rent money. By the time you get me outa here, I’ll owe you two hundred fifty dollars over the thirty dollars I already owes you.”

“That isn’t fair, Essie May. Everything’s against the landlord.”

“I’ll get that thirty dollars to you by and by,” she assured him.

I was still thinking about carrying Papa Spoon from one room to the other in a small funeral procession to what would probably be his last resting spot while he was alive. I
never thought something like this would happen when I left the store that morning on such a small job.

I leafed through the bills she handedme and looked at the invoice, comparing the amount in my hand to the numbers on the paper.

“You made a mistake, Essie May.”

“I did? You shore?”

“You overpaid me by, uh, let me see… Yeah. Thirty dollars.”

“Let me see yo’ piece of paper, son,” she said.

I crumpled it up and threw the invoice under the front porch before she could get her hands on it.

“You mean these?” I asked, handing her three ten dollar bills.

“You shore about that?” she asked.

“It’s an upside down world, didn’t you know?” I asked.

Her eyes sparkled, and she gave thebills to Winston K. Finley before returning inside the unpainted house to watch cartoons and tend to what was left of Papa Spoon before the rejoicing began.