Chapter 5 - Thelma

Thelma Lincoln and Flora Jenkins, had grown up together, to become two beautiful and charming young women. Thelma walked through life in the footsteps of Flora, and a more comfortable place to be walking, she could not imagine. Flora taught Thelma to read, who in turn taught her own mother and father. They played daily. Their games and their amusements had matured with them, from dolls to mud pies in the backyard of the Jenkins’s home, to hide and seek and dress up in their mother’s clothes, to horseback riding and rope tricks with the ranch hands. Thelma grew up in constant view of the rear of the large Jenkins house, in a shack of unpainted wood with a thatch roof and a small porch, on a lot of land granted to her father by Mr. Jenkins’s father. Thelma had slept for twenty years on a bed of hay stuffed into a cotton bed-sheet, against a wall in back of a pig-pen where the grunts and snorts of pigs and their little ones became the comforting white noise that eased her to sleep every night.

For Thelma the comforting site of the Jenkins’s beautiful home would disappear on some mornings in spring and in fall, when at times a thick fog obscured the view of the house from her front porch. To the Lincoln family, the fog was a menacing look at a life that might be. It was a lonely few hours on those mornings, before the heat of the land pushed upward on the cool blanket of fog. It was a few hours when the Jenkins family were not spoken of by the Lincolns, as if to do so would superstitiously affirm their own unspoken fears of sudden independence from the Jenkins. During these foggy mornings Thelma and her family entertained their own thoughts about life without the Jenkins. Thoughts that included feelings of insecurity and of separation anxiety. These periods of silence, on those dismal and quiet mornings, were in contrast to the usual talking and singing or sharing their last night’s dreams with each other. As Thelma had matured she began to realize it was on these mornings her parents would be forced to consider the questions of where would they go, what would they do if something happened to the Jenkins, if the Jenkins’s house burned down, or if the Jenkins got sick and died. The “coloreds,” of Kansas had been free for a long time, but this relationship was common for most in these years of Jim Crow law that called a race of people “free,” but in reality were still enslaved by an unbreakable economic dependence upon the white ruling class. Families symbiotically living, co-dependant, separated by dirt, and walled off on occasion by an impenetrable fog. Fog divided these lives of polar existence on the same land, connected by a two hundred yard dirt trail, connected by the proud ownership of a small piece of gifted land barely worth one horse, chained by wages that disallowed choice, roped by emotional insecurity, all unspoken of, especially on foggy mornings.

It was about a half a year after Flora vanished when John began to see Thelma in a different way. After Flora’s disappearance, Thelma’s steadfast loyalty to the family, to the boys and to his own care, had seemed crucial to their sustained survival. It seemed that she was always there close or nearby for every emotional and historic moment of the past many months. She had become an extension of John’s daily life experience. She was as a healthy and vibrant tree on a field, providing a place for the family of two boys and a man to take comfort underneath her. She kept the soil beneath them cool, moist and fertile, soft and grassy, and her lush leaves provided pleasant shade from the harsh sunshine, and cleaned the air above them. Without her, living in normalcy in the house on Santa Fe Street, would have been almost impossible.

John’s moment of realization of who Thelma was to him, of her importance and her intimacy, came to him on a winter evening while in the living room, in front of the fireplace while she sat on the floor playing with the boys. John rested with his legs propped up on tea table feeling the warmth of the fire and enjoying the gaggle of laughter and play from the boys and Thelma in front of him on the floor. Thelma was sitting on her hip with her legs folded under her as she held herself up with one hand on the floor. John found his eyes had fixated on the curvature of her buttocks and hip and his eyes scanned lower down her body savoring her legs and he held his gaze examining the perfect uniformity of her dark skin at her calves and ankles. “Splendid.” Came to his mind as he continued his vision tour upwards to her arched back, her fine curled black hair tucked upwards with a silver hair comb. He breathed deeply through his nose at her direction and from five feet behind her his sense located her smell, her familiar lilac oil perfume. John felt the rise of his libido, which he had not felt in over a year, and his heart beat increased and his conscience became embarrassed for his ego that was now taking over with impulsive and animal instinct. For no apparent reason Thelma quickly turned and looked directly at him, catching his stare, he immediately diverted his eyes back to his newspaper. He removed his legs from the table in front of him and folded one up over the other to hide his increasing physical arousal from view of Thelma, in case she looked back at him again. Thelma leaned over further away from John to reach some toys on the floor and John soaked-in the sight of her buttocks lifting, rolling forward, then returning to the floor to press against the rug and spread out slightly under the weight of her upper torso. He kept smiling, as if paying attention to the boys and their play, he held his newspaper stiffly upright to conceal himself.

It was time for the boys to go to bed and Thelma ushered them upstairs to the bathroom to wash and change them into their night robes. Still reclined on the couch in the living room, John gazed at the fire while hearing the familiar sounds of the boys preparing for sleep and Thelma giving instructions and answering Sydney’s multiple questions about life.

“Jesus I’m filthy, an out of control lustful idiot. Damn she is most desirable. Why I have not noticed this fine body before, I do not know. What am I to do? Will she be receptive to me? Am I no better than a drunken masher, about to take advantage of a young woman under my authority? What if she feels the same way? Is it wrong then? Damm, Jesus H. Christ!”

John picked up his tea cup and went into the kitchen to conduct some mundane activity to distract himself from his lust. He was adding sugar to a fresh cup of tea when Thelma’s voice startled him from behind.

“You going to stay up a little while longer Mr. Irwin?”

Startled, John spilled tea on the counter top as he picked up his cup and turned swiftly to Thelma, who was smiling and standing just a few feet behind him, holding some of the boy’s laundry.

“Um, yes, well I was feeling a bit restless, so I thought I would sit awake and read some more before turning in, yes a bit restless.”

Thelma walked over to the wash basin and unloaded her arms of the laundry. She turned to John and looked him over, still smiling, but more deviously now, she looked in his eyes, then lowered her gaze to John’s pants, allowing John to see that she saw his arousal. John was intensely embarrassed now as he realized she could see his excitement.

“It looks to me Mr. Irwin, like you are a little bit more than just restless this night.” Thelma gently smiled.

John blushed so intensely he could feel the warmth envelop his face immediately. Wordless he stood. Caught. Beyond embarrassment he stood, a man animal, a lustful puppy, discovered. Guilt was a feeling still new to John. For an honest man enjoys the comfort of no reason to feel guilt. Flora had been gone for many months and any hope of her return was greatly diminished now. A woman was close to him. A vibrant young woman. A loving woman who has gone beyond the call of hired help time and again for John and his family. A complex range of multiple emotions was now in John’s mind. Betrayal of matrimony to Flora was a feeling he could not ignore. Taking advantage of Thelma’s convenience of proximity to him was another matter that would grow guilt in his psyche. His relationship as her employer provides him the ability to intimidate her, to coerce her, to be a source of threat to her employment and this was a matter of ethical concern to weigh, or to ignore, in moments of animal indulgence.

Then there were the social norms that may be violated if John was to engage in an intimate relationship with Thelma, as interracial coupling was reason for lynching in some parts of the south although it never has been in Kansas. The Klan was very active in central Kansas, John knew two men who participated in their meetings and had been asked to join on more than one occasion. But John had not known racism in his own personality, he had boyhood friends in Chicago who were colored, his best friend at the Worley’s hog farm had been colored, and Thelma’s brother and her mother and father had become extended family to him and to the boys.

But racism prevails in this society. The separation was everywhere, coloreds had to have their own restaurants, their own movie house, no whites would wash their laundry where the laundry of “coloreds” was washed. Thelma like so many less politically aware coloreds of her time, did not think of the segregation as racism, she did not know the word “racism,” as an expression of life in Kansas for her and her family. It was only “how things are.” The racism was deeper than a well, more fixated in the culture than the mortar between bricks. Women could not vote and so were less than citizens in the eyes of the white male hierarchy. Coloreds could not mix their physical bodies, their fluids, their touch or their very flesh with that of whites and so being respectable citizen members of society was not even a hope, not even a whim in their futures. Integration was a rumor, it was a myth and a wish, or a dangerous thought. A white man taking a colored mistress was more common than it probably should be. But the act in itself was a left over from the slavery days. It was an unspoken practice accepted among men’s clubs that dotted the rural communities and plantations of the south and central plains.

John had not felt so strong for a woman since he began courting Flora over three years ago. Here at this moment stood before him a beauty with ties to Flora possibly more strong than his own as her husband. Flora’s girlhood best friend, her confidant, and a friend more dear to Flora than anyone could have been. It was clear to John, in knowing Thelma in these past years, that her personality was forged on the ranch alongside Flora. The witticisms and sayings, and the giggles in secret shared behind walls in the house were clearly familiar musings known only to two best friends, sisters in spirit. To John, reminding himself of Thelma’s relationship to Flora allowed ethical concerns to be easier, as if Thelma could be viewed as an extension of Flora’s embodied memories.

“She is very much like Flora, like a part of her all along, all this time right here in my house with me.”

John kept his eyes on Thelma’s face while he fumbled behind himself to find a landing place on the counter for his tea cup and while holding himself up with his other arm against the counter-top.

“Why Mr. Irwin you was looking me over tonight, wasn’t you?” Thelma cracked the ice, smiling as if having fun.

“Umm, well. Well Flora, I mean, oh sorry. Thelma, I suppose, being a man without a wife, I did indulge in the sight of you this evening. My apologies Thelma, I have been like an impulsive dog.”

“You’re no dog Mr. Irwin. You are a sweet and kind man who needs comforting like any man would. I don’t take any offense to your stares at my body, after all, I like it, I’ve been looking you up and down for a long time.” Thelma relaxed the environment.

John smiled and his embarrassment subsided. Thelma took two steps toward John and she looked up into his eyes. John then embraced her by her shoulders and pulled her close and she wrapped her right arm behind John’s back and rubbed upwards and downwards as if to tell him he has permission and that she wants him to relax and to enjoy her. Like Goddard’s rocket, John’s own atmosphere piercing launch occurred in his brain the instant Thelma’s hand trapped his. In his mind an explosion of blood and heat. Thelma’s calming hand on his back kept him from launching though the ceiling and out of the roof. John’s thoughts raced by indistinguishable, like the blurred faces of passengers behind the windows of a passing train. John braced the rear of Thelma’s head and planted his lips on hers with a force equivalent of his animal emotion. Thelma returned his strength and their faces became engrossed in a fervor of movement, of moist exchange and of pressing sensual lust for each other.

“Oh Mr. Irwin, Mr. Irwin, please don’t stop Mr. Irwin. I was waiting for you.”

“Please Thelma, don’t call me Mr. Irwin, it’s John, John Thelma.”

John had no doubt at this moment of having to worry about taking advantage of Thelma. He was greatly relieved that she too wanted him, that she too had been watching, waiting and thinking of his body as he was hers.

Under the light of a single gas lamp on the kitchen wall the two newly found lovers rocked forward and backwards on a cold floor in a hot and moist embrace, trying to be silent, failing to be. Thelma wanted to see John’s face and he hers, they stared into each other’s eyes as time continued slowly, all but frozen by their mind’s perception of sheer pleasure.

Without leaving the kitchen the two made love on the floor, half clothed, half out of their minds. Time moved slowly for both lovers and yet the event was over all too soon. Afterwards John and Thelma barely had a half a minute to kiss each other in gratitude and acknowledgement of their new relationship, sweat covering their heads and their breath panting. The kids were starting down the stairs to see what all the ruckus was. Their foot falls on the wood floor struck terror in their minds. Thelma quickly moved to the kitchen table and composed her hair, wiping her sweat from her face. John jumped into his pants and fastened them on, leaving his shoes and leggings sloppily displayed on the corner of the floor. Sitting at the dining table across from each other, they waited the three seconds for Sydney and Orenthal to appear in the kitchen doorway, with questions.

“Daddy? Thelma? What happened? Is everything all right? You yelled, what’s wrong?” Sydney was first at the doorway with his forehead creased in question.

Orenthal was silent waiting for an answer to Sydney’s inquiry, rubbing his eyes, he had just fallen asleep when awoken by this unusual occurrence. John looked at Thelma and gently nodded his head to signal to her that he would tell them something. Thelma remained semi composed hoping the darkness of the kitchen would conceal their physical appearance.

“Your father stepped on a nail boys and it went in pretty far, you must have heard me yelling in pain. But I think I am just fine. Thelma is helping me put a bandage around it. Go on back to bed now.” John said as he smiled.

In concert with John, Thelma smiled at the boys to reassure them things were all right. Sydney looked over at the shoes and leggings on the other side of the kitchen and accepted the story right away. Nails had been pushing up through the floors of the house lately.

Thelma well understood what she was getting into by being involved in a loving relationship with John. She would have to be the secret lover, but that seemed acceptable to her and she enjoyed knowing John in this new way, she cherished immensely the few times during any given month that they could actually be alone and loving towards each other. She would be by his side, close in emotion, distant in physical proximity. In town, she walked behind him by four or five feet, following in the footsteps of a man she loved deeply, beside him in her heart but behind him just as a colored woman in nineteen-thirteen should be. The boys would never know of the relationship as children. If they told someone in town, it could spell trouble for Thelma, it could cost John his job and perhaps a visit from the Klan.