by Pearl Cleage
He opened his toolbox and started looking at the various sizes of screwdrivers, matching them up quickly with the pieces of the baby bed where they would be required. One thing about Wild Eddie, he wasn't much of a talker. He never
seemed to be uncomfortable. He just didn't talk to fill in empty space like most people do. I wondered if that was habit too.
I sat there and drank my coffee and he put that whole crib together and never said a word. And it was okay. There was something really quiet about Eddie. I don't mean just not talking. Something about him was still. When he got through with the crib's assembly and attached the mobile, we stood back to admire his handiwork.
"I figured out why I didn't recognize you at the airport," he said, like we'd been engaged in a discussion about it.
"Because I grew up," I said.
He gestured toward my almost-shaved head. "No. I thought you'd have more hair."
"I was in the hair business," I said, "but when it comes to my own, sometimes I go through periods where less is definitely more."
"What business are you in now?" he said.
I heard myself hesitate, but I played right past it. "I'm between engagements."
He looked at me. "I like it." He took his time before he said it, too, like he was really trying to decide.
"Thanks," I said, and picked up our cups to take back into the kitchen so he wouldn't catch me blushing.
"I like it a lot." And he smiled the smile that had been at the heart of most of the Wild Eddie Jefferson stories I'd ever heard involving women. I was beginning to understand why.
22
It was another pretty day. I'm making pasta for dinner tonight and I wanted to get some decent red wine to go with it, so I decided to drive to Big Rapids in search of Chianti. I borrowed Joyce's car, treated myself to lunch at a pretty little restaurant with outdoor cafe seating that looked like it had just dropped in from Paris for the afternoon, and found a liquor store with a huge, if dusty, selection of wine. I was poking around, to the complete disinterest of the bored owner, when the door opens and in walks Reverend Anderson. Well, he doesn't really just walk in. He kind of creeps in like he doesn't especially want anybody to see him in a liquor store in the middle of the afternoon. He didn't see me, so I just watched him.
"WhatTl it be?" said the owner, folding his newspaper and looking put upon.
"A fifth of Jack Daniel's and a pint of peach brandy," the Rev said, pulling out his wallet.
The owner rang up the sale and grimaced at the brandy as he bagged it up. "My wife likes this stuff, too," he said. "I don't see how they drink it. Too sweet for me."
"Thank you," said the Rev, folding the bills the man handed him and striding out quickly.
I took two bottles of passable Chianti to the cash register and looked out the window in time to see the Rev pulling away from the parking lot. His companion, a young man who looked about fifteen, sat as close to the door as he could without riding on the roof. He was probably on his way to a lecture from the Good Reverend about some sin or another, and he didn't seem to be looking forward to it one bit.
Well, I thought, that's an interesting idea. Combine some youth outreach work with a trip to the liquor store.
"You ever drink that sweet brandy?" said the owner, feeling more kindly now that I was actually buying something, I guess.
"No," I said. "Too sweet for me."
"Exactly," he said, double-bagging my wine and smiling now like he was pleased to see I shared his opinion. "That's it exactly."
As I got back in the car and turned back toward Idle-wild, I kept seeing that kid's shoulders hunched up around his neck like he was trying to retract his head like a human turtle. Too bad, I thought. If he'd been to church on Sunday, he'd know: no hiding place down here.
23
Imani arrived this morning. She is the quietest baby I've ever seen. It's almost like she knows her family history and is just glad somebody cared enough to take her home. She isn't about to make any waves. When the social worker handed her to Joyce, she was wide-awake and looking at everything with this real serious expression on her face. The social worker, who turned out to be a former co-worker of Joyce's, said she didn't make a sound the whole drive down.
"Be great for you if she stays that quiet," the woman said. "Some of them scream bloody murder the whole time they're awake."
Them. The way she said it made me feel sorry for Imani. She was already part of a group nobody wanted to deal with: crack babies.
We looked at Imani, who looked back without blinking as if to say: can you imagine me acting a fool like that? No way.
When the social worker left, Joyce sat down on the couch and held Imani on her knees so we could look into her face. She was a thin, cocoa brown baby with long, skinny legs and big, dark, old-lady eyes.
"We have the same stylist," I said, running my hand lightly over her perfectly bald head. It was warm and smooth.
"Isn't she beautiful?" Joyce said, and leaned over to kiss the baby on both cheeks and smile into her face. Imani watched her intently without a trace of a smile back. She was also the most serious baby I had ever seen. The idea of chucking her under the chin or tickling her ribs was out of the question.
"I'll bet she has plenty to say," Joyce said. "Don't you? But you have to get someplace safe before you tell your secrets, isn't that right? I think that's rieht."
Imani's eyes never left Joyce's face. "Do you want to hold her?"
I hadn't really thought about it, but when Joyce asked the question, Imani turned toward me like she was waiting for the answer, too. What could I say? Joyce put her in my arms and went into the kitchen to see what the social worker had brought from the hospital.
"Well," I said, wondering why there is such a strong urge to talk gibberish to babies. I resisted it. "You made it, huh? Got born anyway."
She looked at me with her old-lady eyes like it had already been quite a trip. I was glad that she had landed here with us and hadn't had to go with her angry aunt Mattie and her crazy uncle Frank. You don't get to pick your family, but sometimes it's good to have options.
I ran my hand over her little head again and she snuggled against me in a way that made me feel a surge of what I guess was maternal protectiveness. Imani had already kicked a drug habit cold turkey and outrun the HIV her mama was sending special delivery. She was stronger than she looked, and somehow that made me feel stronger, too.
"You go, girl," I said. "With your bad baby self."
All of a sudden I heard Joyce burst out laughing in the kitchen, but before she could explain, Eddie pulled up in the yard. Joyce stopped laughing long enough to introduce him to
Imani. I handed her to him and he held her easily, like it was a perfectly natural thing to do. I liked that. It always pissed me off when men would go all thumbs if you asked them to hold a baby. Eddie even knew how to support the head. Imani gave him the same unblinking consideration she had bestowed on us while Joyce showed us what was so funny.
At the bottom of the bag the social worker had brought with bottles, diapers, bibs, and teething ring was a sort of harness thing that lets you pretend you're breast-feeding when you're really not. Supposedly some brother wanted to experience the joys of breast-feeding and invented this bib with tubes
to simulate that. Eddie and I agreed this is not a brother that either one of us has any interest in getting to know. Bottle-feeding is one thing, but trying to fool the kid into thinking the milk is coming from inside you when it's really cow's milk seemed a little weird. Joyce said we're just scared to open up to new experiences and that when Imani gets older, she's going to tell her how we acted.
We all laughed, but in the middle of it, I realized I'm probably not going to be around for much of Imani's life. Two days ago I wasn't even sure I wanted to spend the summer with this kid, but now I'm starting to really feel sorry for myself, picturing Eddie and Joyce witnessing her first steps without me. Going to her dance recitals and softball games. Taking sn
aps at her high school graduation. My brain went through a fast-forward of Kodak moments where I was conspicuously absent. I almost started crying at how much I was going to miss, then I thought fuck it. I'm well right now and I'm not going to make myself sick worrying about what's going to happen next.
So I took a deep breath like they keep saying on this meditation tape and tried to focus on being right in this room, right in this moment, and I actually felt better! It was amazing. I dragged that scared part of myself kicking and screaming into the present moment and it was so good to be there. I started grinning like an idiot.
I hope I can remember this feeling next time I'm blubbering into my pillow because I can't count on the next thirty years. One day at a time. I ought to have that shit tattooed on my forehead. One damn day at a time.
24
I knew their was going to be trouble when Joyce came home with four packages of juicy jumbo hot dogs and six boxes of latex condoms, but I don't think any of us had any idea how much trouble until Gerry walked into the fellowship hall and saw Aretha unrolling a very slippery lubricated condom over a jumbo juicy that, to facilitate matters, had been mounted straight up on a chopstick like the hard-on from hell.
The evening started off calmly enough, considering that most of these girls had not only never used a condom, they had never seen one, except in drugstore displays with smiling white couples on the front and the mysterious thing itself well concealed within. The words safe sex were not a part of their erotic vocabularies any more than birth control entered into their family planning options.
When Joyce introduced the Wednesday night session, which she had assured Gerry would focus on nothing more controversial than scheduling nursery workers for Sunday morning, by saying they were going to talk about AIDS, one of the older women in the group, which put her at about eighteen, snickered and rolled her eyes. I thought she was the one who had told Aretha at the nursery everybody knew she ain't got no sense, but her hair and makeup were so different, it was hard to tell. Apparently the fairly ordinary upsweep she'd favored for Sunday morning was of no interest during the week. She had added badly braided extensions, which were gathered on top of her head in a tall, gold-toned comb and still hung well below her shoulders. The braids were clearly new and still pulled so tight her eyes now had a distinctly unnatural slant that wasn't being helped much by the frosty blue eye shadow she was wearing. Add the deep plum lipstick, and homegirl had a look that was uniquely, and thankfully, all her own.
"Ain't nobody in here fucking no faggots," she said. "Excuse my French."
Joyce didn't even blink. She just asked them what they thought was the number one killer of young black folks all over America. They guessed homicide, drug overdose, cancer, and car accidents, in that order. When Joyce said AIDS, they thought she was kidding.
"You just trying to scare us into reading this stuff, right?" said a thin, muddy brown girl who I recognized from the nursery, too. She was sitting alone, jiggling a sickly-looking baby across her knees and waving one of the health department pamphlets. The baby didn't look much happier than he had on Sunday, but at least he wasn't crying.
"You need to be scared," Joyce said calmly, "if you want to stay alive."
That sort of got their attention and they started asking questions. Sitting in the back, holding the peacefully sleeping Imani, my only job for the evening once I reminded Joyce that I was not here to do missionary work, thank you, I was amazed and frightened by how little information they had. A lot of us can chalk our HIV up to innocence or ignorance or Ronald Reagan's inability to say the word AIDS out loud, but this generation is supposed to know better. The information is everywhere, but it seems to wash right over them.
They wanted to know where it came from, how you could get it, could your kids get it, did you always die from it, and how could you tell who had it and who didn't.
"You can't tell," Joyce said. "That's why we have to use condoms every single time."
"My old man ain't havin' it," a woman with a long blond ponytail of somebody else's hair said, shaking her head. "He said he can't feel nothin' when he use 'em."
She hadn't even dyed the rest of her hair to match. The front was regular, dark brown, need-a-touch-up Negro woman's
* hair. The back was literally a horse of a different color. I wondered who was doing their hair. Probably the same person giving them birth control advice.
"My boyfriend say when we get it goin' good, he don't wanna stop and put no rubber on," somebody else said.
"That's part of what we have to do," Joyce said. That's when she reached into the shopping bag beside her and brought out the juicy jumbo. "We're going to learn how to put it on for him."
Aretha had been sitting in the back, but when Joyce said that, she looked at me and grinned conspiratorially. "Don't want to miss anything," she said, got up, and walked right up to the front. I laid Imani in her babyseat and moved up a little myself. As long as I was here, I didn't want to miss anything either. Joyce smiled and reached into the Baggie, took out the hot dog, held it up like she was demonstrating Tup-perware, and then plunged it down on the chopstick so it seemed to stand at attention, awaiting her command. The women whooped with laughter.
"That look a little like Junebug!" one giggled.
"In your dreams," Blond Ponytail teased her.
Joyce reached into the bag again and brought out a box of condoms.
"Putting the condom on for your partner doesn't have to be a chore," Joyce said, and I mentally did the next sentence with her. "It can be part of your lovemaking."
This spiel assumes, of course, that lovemaking is the activity in which the parties are engaged. Safe sex is based on two people agreeing to plan ahead and prepare for their physical exchanges in advance of the moment where everybody is firmly in the grip of their hormones and whatever drugs or alcohol they use to enhance the moment. Looking around at the young women now crowded around Joyce's demonstration, I was willing to bet that making love is not any more a part of their sex lives than creative, mutually pleasurable foreplay.
First Joyce asked them to tear open a condom and look at it, touch it, roll it around in their fingers, smell it. This was all done with a maximum of giggling, signifying, and eye rolling, but I could see they were intrigued. Even the girl with the unhappy baby moved into the circle, too curious to hang back. By the time Joyce asked for a volunteer, six hands went up, but Aretha was standing right in front of the jumbo on a stick and she grabbed it.
The girl with the new extensions rolled her new eyes and snorted. "You better ask for a Vienna sausage to practice on, little girl. You know you can't handle nothin' like this."
Aretha was cool. She ripped open a packet containing a bright purple condom and smiled sweetly. "You know, Tom-ika, since I'm the only one in here who ain't got no baby, or about to have one" she paused significantly, positioned the condom carefully, and slowly rolled it down the quivering jumbo"I must be the only one who is handlin' it the way it's 'spose to be handled." She popped the condom securely in place and turned to Tomika. "Your turn."
Several of the girls applauded, but Tomika tossed her hair until it swirled around her head like Medusa. "I don't need no practice," she said.
"That's not what Roy say," the girl at her elbow said with a giggle, and moved quickly out of smacking range.
"We all could use some practice," Joyce said, handing a packet to the thin girl with the fussy baby. "You want to try, Patrice?"
Patrice looked at Joyce for a second or two like she was deciding whether to go along with the program or scoop up her baby and try to make it home in time to see New York Undercover.
"Go ahead, girl," said Tomika, glad to be off the spot. "You got it."
"Shit," said Patrice, taking the condom from Joyce defiantly and unrolling it, "you ain't said nothin' but the word." She looked at Joyce, who nodded approvingly. "Okay?"
"Okay."
"Now can I ask you one thing?"
"Go ahead," Joy
ce said.
"It ain't nothin' to it when it's sittin' still like that. But what you 'spose to do when it's wigglin' all over the place?"
This broke up the group, but Joyce didn't bat an eye. "Use two hands," she said, a technique that she proceeded to demonstrate to great and vocal delight, but which, from her reaction, the Reverend Mrs. didn't find at all amusing.
"What do you think you're doing?" Her voice, which was so beautifully spirit-filled on Sunday morning, sounded like the Devil speaking through that girl in The Exorcist. I turned toward the sound, fully expecting her head to be spinning around and pea soup to be spewing from her mouth. Clustered, guiltily now, around the table at the front of the room, we hadn't seen her come in. I wondered how long she had been standing there.
The power of her outrage brought an immediate silence. Even the children were suddenly quiet, waiting to see which one had provoked such a response from this woman who was now stalking toward the front of the room where the jumbo stood, safely hooded, in the center of a table scattered with condoms and replacement dogs in case this first one didn't hold up through the ministrations of all the sisters present.
The force of Gerry's outrage was so overpowering that the women fell back in her wake, groping behind them for their purses and their children, even while they hoped Joyce could save the situation.
Gerry stood across the table from Joyce now, pointing accusingly at the offending display. "What in the name of all that is holy do you think you are doing with these girls?" Joyce didn't flinch. "I'm trying to save their lives." "By exposing them to this . . . this filth?" Gerry spit out the words.
"By telling them the truth."
For a few seconds nobody moved and then Gerry stepped forward and swept her arm across the table, sending hot dogs, condoms, and pamphlets flying. It reminded me of that scene in The Ten Commandments where old Charlton Hes-ton flings down the stone tablets to break up the decadent orgy in progress that greets his return from the wilderness, except I think Gerry was even madder than that. I could see her trembling even from the back of the room, struggling to regain control of her speech.