Fifth Born

by Zelda Lockhart

  When we arrived, the event was in full swing. The adults had already congregated around two tables and the barbeque pits to prepare the meal. Reverend Richards looked so different in a T-shirt and jeans that I was ashamed to look at him. It was too easy to imagine him with a beer in one hand and a spatula in the other, like one of my uncles. But this was a different party. There were no beers or half-drunk glasses of brown or clear whiskey.

  LaVern and I hung close to Aint Fanny, then we both got up to join our cousins.

  Hold on, Four Eyes! Aint Fanny was talking to me, but LaVern and I both stopped dead in our tracks, a product of being from a large passel; when one kid gets it, all get it. Aint Fanny shouted out, Get back here and sit down!

  What did I do?

  Dont talk back to me, girl.

  Aint Fanny grabbed me by the arm like I was a dirty rag and flung me onto the bench.

  LaVern stared, but when Aint Fanny said to her, Its okay, baby. You can go play, I knew that I had lost LaVern, who looked at me like I had truly done something wrong, then disappeared into the mix of cousins and other kids.

  I sat on the bench all day and didnt dare contradict Aint Fannys occasional glare by asking to go play. I looked out at the trees and sky as if I had chosen to sit down for a while and enjoy the view. I held on to my tears past the meal and the ride home, but when Aint Fanny was letting us out of the car, shecalled me back. Whats wrong with your hair in back? Its so nappy. And look at your clothes. I cant believe I even shamed myself with you. Go on in the house.

  She reached over and snatched the car door out of my hand and slammed it shut. In the house I took comfort in the familiar smell of chili cooking for dinner. I didnt even mind the mixture of odors wafting in from the backyardDogs crap and freshly cut grass. Once I was safe behind the locked door of the bathroom, I let loose a quiet convulsion of sadness.

  That night I made tiny braids from the bit of hair on the back of my head. Somewhere I heard that hair grows faster if you braid it. Towanda gave me some of her Dippity-Do with some advice.

  This way the braids wont just come a loose at night. Your hair dont look bad. LaVerns hair is longer than yours because she gets perms. But you gotta stop lookin so pitiful all the time, and then Aint Fanny will stop pickin on you. Act like you dont want to go with her and you dont care. Dont forget, Odessa, shes crazy, and if she wants to act like LaVern is her daughter, let her.

  But I told her that LaVern acts like shes not even kin to us anymore. She plays with Gretal more than me now, because both of them have good hair and stuff and think theyre better.

  When I turned four, Towanda turned ten, and when I reached the fourth grade, she had already gone to high school. She managed to keep herself out of the house and out of the way. She got straight As and had caught up with Lamont in school. She carried the tuba in marching band because she was the strongest girl in the tenth grade. She taught the rest of us how to deal with our family.

  Listen, Odessa, Aint Fanny picks on you because she knows youre always looking for the attention, and besides, Mamas too busy keeping up with Deddy and changing diapers to notice if one less kid is begging for somethin.

  To hear her talk like this always made me feel like I had no control over the things that happened in our family. There certainly didnt seem to be any sense in wondering if Mama was going to get mad at Aint Fanny, or if Mama was going to marry Leland, or if Deddy would kill both of them if he found out. It didnt seem to make any difference because the grown-ups made all the messes and us kids didnt have a choice but to come along for the ride

  I realized that I couldnt let there be any more cry baby-baby. If Aint Fanny wanted LaVern, she could have her, and if Mama wanted to go into Sulards Market and kiss all over Uncle Leland, then good, maybe Deddy would find out and they would break up, and then she would stop having babies and pay attention to the ones she had. That summer I turned ten, double digits, and started to talk back to Mama and Deddy just like Lamont and Towanda.

  8

  The Familiar Place

  When we went to Mississippi that summer, Gretal and Devon came with us so that Deddy could take them to see Ranell and Racine. We fit in our station wagon like sardines. Even though the back of the wagon unfolded to make two rows of seats, we were now big enough that our knees touched. The sweat of three adults and six kids and the odor of urine from Daryl's heavy diapers were trapped in the car for eight hot hours, provoking agitation.

  I got sick of Gretal bragging about what she was going to get. "My Aint Ray and Aint Ray gonna take me shoppin and buy me somethin for every year that I been away." LaVern begged if she could go, and without pausing, Mama said yes. I wished Aint Ray and Aint Ray would take the both of them shopping and lose them in a department store. When no one would play with Gretal, I was the one who liked her despite herspitty looks, and now she didnt even ask me to go with her. I worked hard not to cry; heat burned behind my eyes, searing my tears dry before they could roll onto my cheeks.

  The day we got there, Grandeddy let Gretal bust the boil on his ankle. She had been bothering him for hoursIm good at bustin stuff.

  She kept telling Grandeddy that she wished she was his granddaughter, but she didnt know what I knew about Grandeddythat a grandchild was just another hand begging for candy behind the counter in his store.

  You can call me Grandeddy if you want, child. Now go on and play, Miss Flabby. Grandeddy laughed at the cleverness of the nickname for Gretal, tiny breasts and a butt more round than most nine-year-old girls. And Gretal laughed the same way her mother did when Deddy took a pinch of Devons flesh between his rough, oily fingers.

  I couldnt wait for Deddy to go see his people in Jackson so he could take Gretal and Devon to visit their own kin. Not crying about it just made me feel an itching from the inside, an irritation that hadnt found its way to the surface. When it was finally time for them to go to Jackson, I sat on the front porch with my eyes closed. Mama, Deddy, Devon, Gretal, and LaVern pulled off in the station wagon, a trail of dirt and rocks in their wake, and I remembered Granmama waving good-bye that last time, the smell of her cotton dress slipping away with the sound of the tires grinding over rocks. I stood up and put my hands in the breast of my overalls to feel where nothing had yet grown.

  The other kids went down the road to our uncles house to watch TV with Neckbone. Grandeddy was out back of Jos house, cleaning the fish they had caught earlier that morning.

  My uncle Jo and his wife were never home, but Neckbonewas the constant, loud reminder that they were someplace nearby. I didnt feel like going, so I hoisted Daryl onto my hip and went out behind Granmamas house. He could sit up now, and crawl, and at home in the playpen he could already yell nonsense while we watched TV. I sat him down in what used to be the chicken coop with a bunch of mason jar lids from Grandeddys moonshine supplies and a wooden spoon, and let him drool and clank around in his diaper and T-shirt.

  I sat on the back porch where Grandeddy now kept the old washtub, and let my mind drift away from Daryls noise. The field behind Granmamas house was a mess. Where the flower bed used to be was now Grandeddys broken-down truck, all rusty. It was hot back there. The sun seared everything to a dry dust. Any breeze just stirred the dirt that looked scorched. The edge of the back porch used to be lined with all kinds of colored flowers. And there used to be curtains in the kitchen window that were sheer and blew with the breeze, but Grandeddy took the curtains down a long time ago and kept the windows shut. The glass was smeared with smashed flies and fingerprints.

  I remembered last summer when there were still only six of us. Mama and Deddy went to Jackson to visit his people, and we sat all night on the musty sofa waiting for something interesting to happen. Grandeddy was content to have his feet up, and to pick the disgusting catfish and mustard green dinner from his teeth. The windows were black, deep with the sound of crickets, and cows mooing way off in the distance. Finally something interesting happened.

  A hornet flew in through a hole in th
e screen and dived at our heads. We burst into commotion. Lamont grabbed the slipper Grandeddy left behind when he shuffled into the kitchen to get the Hot-Shot bug spray. Towanda grabbed a church fanfrom the piano bench, and the rest of us ran from the hornet, laughing and screaming. Grandeddy came back into the room spraying. His arms seemed short, resting on his belly while he pumped the can. In only a few minutes the room was filled with bug spray and the hornet had disappeared. When Grandeddy leaned over, thinking he had found its remains, Lamont took the slipper and whacked him on the butt as hard as he could. It was silent for a moment, then we all burst into hysterical laughter.

  Grandeddy made us sit on the porch for the rest of the night. Neckbone thought it was a game, so he ran back and forth past us, screaming. Until bedtime, we watched him go up the road to Uncle Jos house and back, his grinning teeth appearing out of the black night and disappearing past slamming screen doors.

  I left Daryl in the backyard. The orange dirt settled in his Afro and made his hair look red. I knew that I would get it for not watching him, but I figured that as long as everybody was watching Howdy Doody, and Grandeddy and Uncle Jo were drunk and busy cutting off fish heads, then I should take advantage of the fact that I had never been alone in what used to be Granmamas house. I went in the bedroom to see if anything was the same as when I was a baby. I lay across the pale green sheets that used to be bright. The covers smelled like Grandeddys body oil, like whiskey caught up in his folds of fat. His rifle leaned in the corner where Granmamas cedar wardrobe used to be.

  The wood floor was stomped up and not squared in the corners. Granmama used to say, My baby can crawl all overthis floor. Aint no dirt on this floor. Even the corners is squared off.

  I reached over and opened the nightstand drawer and pulled out a Bible that was held together with a rubber band to keep its old yellow pages from falling out. A wad of photos was crammed in between two pages. When I went to take the rubber band off, it broke.

  I removed the photos. The top one was a picture of Mama as a toddler holding an apple and looking like she was about to cry. Mama had the same photo at home and showed it to company to prove how much her baby picture looked like all of ours. Mama always talks about remembering herself in that picture, all dressed up and happy until another baby tried to take her apple. For the first time I looked at that photo and did not see a baby mad about stolen fruit, but a baby whose eyes were solid black with sadnesseyes like mine that hid behind the glare of thick glasses.

  On the page where the photos were crammed, there was a passage circled.

  I had many things to write, but I will not with ink and pen write unto thee: but I trust I shall shortly see thee, and we shall speak face to face. And written so neatly at the bottom of the page:

  I LIVED IN FEAR SO MUCH THAT

  I COULDNT SHOW YOU ANY LOVE

  I lifted the pages to my face and smelled Granmamas old perfume, and for a minute the room around me was clean again and the sheets crisp from the sun, but Daryl yelled out from the backyard and the dankness of the room was back. I ached deep inside for something clean and whole, Granmamas touch, the days when I was as new to this world as Daryl.

  I stuffed the photos back in the Bible, placed it quietly back in the nightstand, and put the broken rubber band in my pocket. I planned to sneak back in Granmamas room before we went back to St. Louis and sit quietly in what felt safe, but Neckbone and my sisters and brothers made constant traffic in and out of the house, never leaving me alone again.

  When we got home, I circled that passage in Mamas Bible so I could keep studying it until I knew what it meant and why Granmama liked it. Inside I could feel something that I had lost long ago trying to come back to me. A familiarity to cradle in a corner of my mind while anger and sadness brewed like a heavy storm.

  9

  Shelter

  Our house now looked crushed and bruised in places. The walls had dents that had never been patched. Curtains that Mama made for the kitchen back before I was born were yellowing. The stain on the bathroom ceiling, from where Gretal had let the upstairs tub overflow, was getting bigger. My body and my sisters and brothers bodies were all getting larger as the house shrank around us. But Mama and Deddy and my aunts and uncles bodies just got saggier. Fewer of them danced at the club meetings. With glasses of liquor turned up to their faces, they were too drunk to cut a rug the way they used to. Some of them danced just like on Soul Train, like there was a camera right in front of them; the others flung themselves around the room, oblivious to their performance.

  Into the early hours of morning their sounds rose to laughter,then mixed with feet stomping to music, arguments in the kitchen; one of the aunts whimpered behind the mix of noises that disappeared with slamming car doors as the sky threatened daylight.

  When all the company left, I heard Mama and Deddy arguing.

  Loni, I didnt move up here to be lookin at you drunk all the time, and to be applyin for food stamps because you tryin to be Super Fly. You good a man as Leland. If your brotha can make good money up here sellin liquor rather than drinkin it all, you can too.

  Deddys speaking was slurred. You goddamn straight Im as good, but if you dont think so, then find another nigga whos gonna go to work every day and support more kids than the old lady in the shoe. I dont need this shit. You dont like where you livin? Get the hell out and take all these goddamn kids with you.

  I sat up in bed listening, trying not to swallow too hard so I could hear if something bad was about to happen. I dont remember falling asleep, but I woke up with the sun and went looking around the house to see if there were any relatives still passed out from the club meeting.

  The house was dark and musty with the smell of spilled liquor. The last album that had played on the hi-fi was still going around. The ashtrays overflowed with cigarette butts. Someone had vomited in the hallway.

  I fantasized Mama finding me, putting her arms tight around me, and pulling me out of this rubble. I still wanted her attention, even though I was angry with her for having another baby, then another, and pushing me further and further into the invisible middle of the Blackburn family. It wasnt just her attention for whoever the new baby was; it was her constanttending to Deddy. When he was home, she was trying to talk and laugh around his alcoholic moods, and when he wasnt, she was busy on the phone talking about what she was going to do to put an end to it.

  If she was talking to one of the aunts, she was going to help him get it figured out, like how all the aunts stayed married to their husbands. If she was talking to one of our neighbors, she was going to do better for herself and for us.

  For all of us, there was confusion in either seeing Mama standing in the mirror to look good for Deddy, or seeing her gather up our stuff to run away from him. Even still, there was a coldness from Mama that seemed especially for me, especially for the secrets we harbored.

  I stood in the middle of the hallway that morning hearing every funeral song that had ever been wailed out into the ceiling of our church, and I wanted Granmama, her words, the things I never got to know of her.

  My mind was about to fly into memories, all played out in the place where I stood, when Mama staggered out of the bedroom and into the kitchen to start coffee for her and Deddy. She sat down with her back to the sitting space. That day, she held the frozen water bottle to the back of her head, to keep down the swelling of whatever happened after I fell asleep. When I came into the kitchen, she got up and put the water bottle back in the freezer and went over to the stove.

  Good mornin, Mama, I mumbled quietly, not knowing if I wanted to hug her or run away out the back door, down the alley as far as I could run past the corner store, the school, until I got to something that I didnt recognize.

  Good mornin. Her voice was hoarse.

  I couldnt look at her because her hair and face looked worn like the walls around us. Without speaking or looking ateach other, the two of us made breakfast. I was glad to be in her company like when I was little.
While we were cooking, Mama picked up the phone and called Leland.

  I sure wish you would come over here and talk to him. I dont want him to wake up and start actin a fool again.

  She didnt tell Leland that her and Deddy had been fighting about him. Mama rolled out the biscuits while she talked, and my heart pounded in my ears as I listened for the squeak of the bedroom door. If Deddy woke up now, he would kill her for calling Leland for help.

  When Leland came by, he gave me and LaVern and Benson and Daryl each a turn being picked up in his arms, and talked to each of us about school or something special. I felt much better after he got there. The house didnt seem so dirty anymore, and my sadness and frustration lifted.

  LaVern tried to tell him in her new proper voice, I dont want you picking me up, Im too big for that.

  But Leland waited till she wasnt looking and scooped her up anyway. Somebody needs to put your hair back in pigtails and beat the britches offa you, girl. The more high and mighty you are, the harder you fall.

  Her eyes rolled and stayed closed until Leland shook his head and put her down.

  You aint my deddy.

  Mama just looked at her sideways as LaVern stormed down the hallway.

  When Leland picked me up, he looked me straight in the eyes, right through my thick glasses, and said, Hows my baby gal? Sweet as sugar and brown as molasses. He pulled a pieceof gum from behind my ear, then put me down and said, Get your shoes on.

  Because Leland never got invited to family gatherings, we didnt know him very well, except for listening to him talk about the way folks are in their nature, and listening to Mama and Deddy talk about him after coming back from free drinks at his tavern on Saturday night. But, Mama had asked for his help, and I was glad, because she had never asked for anybodys help until now.