by J. J. Murray
And she did.
And they have.
And I am now staring at the Canadian luggage filling up our hallway. There is no way all of this will fit in the van, none whatsoever.
Shawna brings in yet another suitcase and has trouble finding a place to put it in the hallway, which is easily twice the size of the van. She balances the suitcase on top of two others. “Think it’ll all fit?”
“If the kids don’t go,” I say.
She rubs my shoulders. She doesn’t play fair. “We’ll just have to get one of those cartop carriers.”
“They’re expensive, and we’re already going to get horrible gas mileage.” If we break fifteen miles a gallon I’ll be ecstatic.
She keeps rubbing. I intend to win this little argument, but that feels so good!
“I want my kids to be prepared for anything,” she says. “Is that asking too much?”
Yes, I want to say. “Is all this absolutely necessary?”
“Yes.” She kisses my cheek.
Oh. Now she’s bringing in the big guns, not that her lips are big. They’re nice and soft and usually seal my fate in any argument with her. “Shawna, I will need a trailer for all this.”
“So rent a trailer.”
I think back to an old trailer memory. I see my father bending over a blown trailer tire, the second blown tire that day, on our way from Aylen Lake to Combermere—a distance of only twenty miles. That little trip took six hours. I could have walked to Combermere faster. Backward.
We used duffel bags once for a trip to Disney World, so ... “I won’t need a trailer. I’ll just stuff my kids’ clothes into duffel bags.”
“And wrinkle everything?”
Don’t all clothes get wrinkled, even in suitcases? “They don’t seem to mind up there.”
“Does your mama have an iron and an ironing board?”
“Of course.”
She shakes her head. “Duffel bags, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“And if we all used them, it will all fit?”
I nod.
“I have some army duffels at the apartment. Will they help?”
I kiss her forehead. “Yes, they will.”
“Don’t be kissing on me, Joe Murphy.” She walks back to the van, which I’ve been letting her use for a couple weeks. “Kissing me on the forehead like he won something,” she mutters.
I won?
I won.
Why don’t I feel victorious, then?
Half an hour later, she brings the army duffels and tosses them onto the porch.
I pick up one and unzip it.
Shawna doesn’t move.
“Are you ... are you going to help?” I ask.
She’s rolling her neck again. “You want me to help you wrinkle my kids’ clothes?”
I smile. “Forget I asked.”
She holds a hand behind her ear. “What? Huh? I couldn’t hear you.”
A few hours later, I have carefully placed the contents of ten large suitcases into six duffel bags filled to bursting, taking pains not to wrinkle anything too badly while Shawna watches my every move.
It is anything but fun.
“That’s still a lot of stuff,” she says.
“It’ll fit.”
I hope.
52
Shawna
While my clothes get crushed to death and wrinkled beyond repair, we leave early in the morning for Atlanta.
I hope Joe knows how to iron. And even if he doesn’t, he is going to learn.
The first part of the trip is uneventful. The boys are wired into their Game Boys, Toni colors, Rose reads, and Crystal listens to her Walkman.
In other words, no bonding is taking place.
When we near Radford, about forty miles away from Roanoke, Junior breaks the silence with some Swahili.
“Pole, pole ndiyo mwendo,” he says.
“You’re not going to do that all the way to A-T-L, are you?” Crystal asks.
“Tell everybody what it means, Junior,” I say, hoping it will start a discussion.
“It means ‘slowly, slowly is indeed the long journey,’” Junior says.
“Kind of like enjoy the ride, huh?” I ask Jimmy.
Jimmy is already gone into the handheld video netherworld.
I smile at Junior. “Got any more Swahili you want to teach us?”
Junior beams and says, “Ngalawa na iwe juu wimbi chini. ‘May the boat be on top, the wave below.’”
“This is a boat,” Crystal says.
“The love boat,” Joe sings. Badly.
Rose gasps, “Daddy, please don’t sing.”
I kind of agree, but ... “Junior, do you have a saying for Rose?”
Junior looks at Rose carefully. “Hmm. Ah. Yai halia tamii kuku.”
“I’m not cuckoo,” Rose says in a huff.
It sounded like cuckoo to me, too.
“It means ‘an egg never sits on a hen,’” Junior says.
Ahh. I like that one. I don’t get it, but it sounds ... Oh. Oh, no. If it means “respect your elders,” Junior is in trouble.
“An egg can’t sit on a hen, Junior,” Rose says. “It’s impossible.”
Junior raises his eyebrows. “You are the egg, and your dad is the hen.”
Rose rolls her eyes. “Thanks a lot, Junior.”
“Mseme kweli nana wajoli,” Junior adds.
“Mama,” Crystal says, “will you please make him stop? He’s giving me a headache.”
I ignore Crystal. I intend to ignore her this entire trip if she really plans on badmouthing Joe. “Junior, what’s that one mean?”
“‘The speaker of truth has no friends,’” he says.
So true! I have to get to Africa. Just setting foot there and learning these sayings will make me wiser.
“Mommy,” Toni says in that voice, which can only mean ... “I have to pee.”
Jimmy looks up. “So do I.”
Joe sighs. “The next rest area is in thirty miles.”
“Mommy,” Toni says in a shriller voice, which can only mean ... “I got to go bad.”
Jimmy leans forward and holds his stomach. “Me, too.”
“Joe, find us a gas station, please,” I say.
“Why?” Joe asks.
“Jimmy’s holding his stomach.”
Joe takes the very next exit, but not before Jimmy leaves a noxious cloud of funk behind him in the van. It’s so bad that I still smell it all the way to South Carolina. When we stop for gas there, I buy several hanging air fresheners, but I still smell that funk!
After we’re back on the road, once again, no one is interacting. Joe doesn’t seem to mind. Traffic is light, the ride is fairly smooth, no one is fussing, no bladders are about to burst, no ... aw, geez! What did that child eat?
Air! I need air!
My kids open or crack the window nearest to them while Joe’s kids just sit there. They must be immune to Jimmy’s bursts. I cringe inside, because it’s only going to get worse when Jimmy eats Mama’s cooking.
Jimmy will have to sleep outside and downwind from any populated areas down in Georgia.
We pass a strange-looking water tower or something that looks like a giant peach.
“Looks like it’s trying to poop,” Jimmy says, snickering.
“Jimmy,” Joe says in a stern voice.
“But it does, Dad,” Jimmy says.
“Ew,” Toni says.
I’d say “ew,” too, but it does sort of look like a peach that will never quite complete a bowel movement. Maybe that’s Jimmy’s problem, too. We need to get that checked out.
During yet another period of silence after the “pooping peach,” I ask Toni to ask Crystal for a CD to play.
“Mommy wants a CD to play,” Toni tells her.
Crystal looks at me. “You’re kidding.”
“Toni,” I say, “tell your sister that I feel the need to do a chair dance.”
“Mommy says,” Toni says, but Crystal cuts her
off.
“I heard her, Toni,” Crystal says.
“Oh,” Toni says.
Crystal takes the CD out of her Walkman. “Tell Mommy to crank this. And also tell Mommy not to throw out a hip.”
Toni hands me the CD, and I let her tell me all that Crystal wanted to tell me. She says “lip” instead of “hip,” but I don’t care. I slide the CD in the player, crank it as loudly as the van’s little speakers can handle, and I start to groove.
“Uh-oh, uh-oh,” the boys chant behind me. “Go, Shawna, it’s your birthday, go Mama, it’s your birthday.”
I am an expert chair dancer, but when Joe tries to match me move for move, that’s when the laughter really begins.
“Daddy, please stop!” Rose yells.
“I can’t stop,” Joe says. “I’m feeling the music.”
“But you’re not feeling it!” Rose shouts. “You’re hurting it!”
The boys do a silly little line dance (while belted and seated, of course), looking like very short Irish River-dancers. And they’re in perfect rhythm! Toni and Crystal are doing a little old-school routine from that Thriller video, and Rose is now saying, “Please! I’m trying to read!”
I reach back and snatch Rose’s book from her. Battle Royale? What’s this about? She lunges for her book, but I pull it farther back. “It’s time to dance, Rose.”
She throws herself back into her seat, crossing her arms.
Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. Hmm. “Okay, y’all. Do what I do.”
“Me, too?” Joe asks.
“No, Joe,” I say, glancing at Rose, “you just drive.”
Eventually, we are all bopping in rhythm together—even Rose, who is at least twitching her shoulders in time to the music—to some song with far too many cuss words. At least I think they’re cussing. How can you tell with all that speed-mumbling? I look at Joe.
I told him to drive. What is he doing? When we’re leaning to the right, he’s leaning to the left, and the van is drifting that way, too! When we’re rising up, he’s dropping down.
But ... it’s funny, the kids are laughing, Crystal isn’t fuming, and Rose even cracks a smile. It all breaks the ice, you know?
When the song ends, however, Crystal asks Toni to ask me for her CD back, the show ends, and I return Rose’s book to her.
Well, what was that? Four minutes of bonding? Great.
I try to stare a hole in Crystal’s head, but I can’t get through. That child has some thick ice up there. Nothing Joe can do or say will make her like him. Even if Joe dropped her off right here and gave her bus fare back to Roanoke—where she’d obviously rather be than be with her family—she’d turn down his money and try to hitch a ride.
Joe turns to me. “Anybody hungry?”
The kids cheer.
At least they agree that they’re hungry.
We stop at a Wendy’s in Gastonia, North Carolina, and get some very long, hard stares. The black girl taking my order never looks me in the eye even once, looking around me to all the children—and to Joe, who is still trying to learn a few moves from Toni.
“Where y’all from?” she asks.
Earth, I want to tell her. “Virginia,” I say.
“Oh,” she says.
Maybe we’re missionaries here, too.
Fed and happy, we putt along, but once we get closer to Atlanta, I, um, I get us lost, and we get to the I-85/I-285 interchange before I realize my mistake.
“Um, Joe?” I say. “We missed our exit.”
“We did?”
“Yeah, um, it’s been a long time since I’ve been down here. Did you see a Highway 20 anywhere?”
Joe’s shoulders slump. “Yeah, about fifteen miles ago.”
Shoot. I’ve just added thirty miles to this trip. “We need to go back.”
“Okay.”
“Kupoteya njia ndiyo kujua njia,” Junior says.
And after almost four hundred miles, I’m almost sick of these sayings. “Go ahead, Junior.”
“‘To get lost is to learn the way,’” he says.
Ain’t that the truth.
We turn around and go north on I-85, getting off on Highway 20, riding to Cumming through sprawling Atlanta suburbia to where my parents live right next door to my Uncle Raymond and his dogs. Most folks like to live apart from their kin.
Not my family.
Uncle Raymond moved in first, and with his Fred Sanford pickup and his barking bullmastiffs annoyed the neighbors into leaving, let my daddy know the property was for sale, and the rest is family history. There used to be a fence separating the two houses, but not anymore. In fact, and I’m sure they’re breaking a few zoning laws, a single fence surrounds both houses so the dogs can run free on over almost two acres. As a result, there is little grass around both houses.
“Where’s the lawn?” Joe asks as we pull up.
“You’ll see why,” I say.
Oh, Lord Jesus, protect us.
Here come the dogs.
53
Joe
Shawna had warned me about her family for days before we left, and if those slobbering, snarling dogs are any indication, I’m in trouble.
“My family is not saved, sanctified, holy, reverent, righteous, saintly, or devout,” she had told me. “They’re blessed, though, with the ability to drink too much, smoke too much, eat too much, and tell you exactly what they’re thinking too much. You are going to see and hear and smell some amazing things. They’re good people, now, but sometimes I wonder. Try not to judge them too harshly.”
The Evans clan—and there are too many to count some nights—does not belie her description.
Most of her family is short and wiry, so Crystal stands out, being so tall. Rodney must have been tall. But I can see where Crystal found the need to tattoo and pierce herself. I see painful-looking ears loaded with earrings and studs, even a few impaled noses and eyebrows, and tattoos on arms, the small of the back, ankles, calves—just about everywhere imaginable.
We have cookouts every night of our visit, filled with hugs, handshakes, ribs, barbecue, greens, and potato salad. Men surround and “work” on Uncle Raymond’s truck, which I realize is really an excuse to get away from the women to drink heavily, since that old truck hasn’t moved in twenty years. “Try some-a this,” they say, offering me an antifreeze container filled with something clear.
I don’t try it. It might really be antifreeze.
Once the men see the van, they tinker with the van’s engine over beers while the ladies fry fish and serve it to some drunk folks who holler long into the night.
But they’re wonderful people.
Wonderful!
While I’m waiting in line that first night, a spread of food on picnic tables as far as I can see, a voice behind me says, “You better get yourself somethin’ quick, cuz these folks can eat.”
I turn and smile at the woman behind me, who is larger than life itself. I don’t mean she’s fat. She’s ... just ... big. “She’s gi-normous,” Jimmy later tells me.
“Who you with?” she asks me.
“I’m Shawna’s fiancé,” I say.
After she finishes laughing and lights another cigarette, she whispers, “Nah, nah. Now who you really here with?”
“Shawna.” I point out my kids to her. “Oh. I’m Joe.”
She squints at them, and then she squints at me. “You and Shawna are gettin’ married?”
“Yes.” I step closer to the food.
“No kiddin’?” she asks.
“No. I mean, yes.” I’ve never known how to answer that one.
The big woman slaps me on the back, and I feel a crown loosen on one of my teeth.
“You still better get you somethin’ quick,” she says, and she sucks on her cigarette. “Cuz like I said, these folks can eat.”
Shawna appears beside me. “Hey, Aunt Sandy.”
“Shawna?” Aunt Sandy asks. “Is this your man?”
She takes my arm. “Yes.”
&n
bsp; Aunt Sandy then starts coughing or laughing or both and walks away fanning the air in front of her.
“Aunt Sandy isn’t related to a single soul here,” Shawna whispers as we get our plates. “She once dated Uncle Raymond about forty years ago, and now she just hangs around drunk most of the time. She’s harmless.”
“You know what she said to me?”
“What?”
I tell her what she told me.
Shawna laughs. “She wasn’t lyin’! You may only get one trip through this line tonight, Joe, so pile it high.”
Later that night, Aunt Sandy offers me a cigarette and a sip of her beer, tells me I have a nice backside for a white man, drags me to the dance floor, which is a flatter section of the yard, and asks me again, “You with someone?”
During a rare lull in the action while games of bid whist break out all over the yard on card tables, Shawna takes me on a stroll. “My family hasn’t left Georgia since they got here from Africa. While the rest of the black South went north, they stayed. My ancestors weren’t lazy. They were just set in their ways. I mean, why leave your home for the unknown after you’ve lived in a place for a couple hundred years? All the ancestral graves are down here, too.”
I look at the ground.
“Not here, Joe.”
“Oh.”
She sighs. “You were trying to be funny, weren’t you?”
“No.” And I wasn’t. Who knows who’s buried underneath all this dirt?
“Anyway, Daddy always says, ‘Ain’t supposed to leave no one behind.’ So the Evans family is as much a part of this state as the clay, and we come in all shades of that clay, too.”
I see some of the most exquisite blending of races here. Cousin Ernie came back from Vietnam with a Vietnamese bride, and their daughter, Tai Lynn, who Crystal hangs out with, is beautiful, with wide eyes and skin a color Crayola doesn’t make.
“Will, my second cousin, went to Korea and came back with Doris,” Shawna says. “Her real name is hard to pronounce, so we all just call her Doris. The marriage didn’t last, but the family still keeps in touch with Doris.”
One night, Shawna points to one of the only women wearing a dress, the rest in jeans or shorts as tight as the ones Crystal wears. “That’s Danika, a cousin I grew up with. Her husband, Phil, isn’t here, but he doesn’t come around that often because he’s a black Republican. You know how rare those are?”