Mama Day

by Gloria Naylor

  My city was a network of small towns, some even smaller than here in Willow Springs. It could be one apartment building, a handful of blocks, a single square mile hidden off with its own language, newspapers, and magazines—its own laws and codes of behavior, and sometimes even its own judge and juries. You’d never realize that because you went there and lived on our fringes. To live in New York you’d have to know about the florist on Jamaica Avenue who carried yellow roses even though they didn’t move well, but it was his dead wife’s favorite color. The candy store in Harlem that wouldn’t sell cigarettes to twelve-year-olds without notes from their mothers. That they killed live chickens below Houston, prayed to Santa Barbara by the East River, and in Bensonhurst girls were still virgins when they married. Your crowd would never know about the sweetness that bit at the back of your throat from the baklava at those dark bakeries in Astoria or from walking past a synagogue on Fort Washington Avenue and hearing a cantor sing.

  You often arrived young and sometimes grew old, making your own small town among us. And it was so easy to see where you’d settled. No development planning for schools, hospitals, or funeral homes. You weren’t about having children or aging. You’d pour your polyester bodies into natural fibers and litter the sidewalks on wrought iron chairs, so you could be seen sitting outside eating whatever food was currently “in.” You mated to the rhythm of sterile music that came from the bars and clubs spread from the Village to the Upper West and East sides before dragging yourselves home to spend Sunday mornings alone reading the Gospel according to the New York Times. So you’d rarely meet a native New Yorker: we gave you, the tourists, and our riff-raff the streets at night. We’d windowshop in amusement at the stores you’d gutted and redecorated in pastel and chrome to sell something as simple as a hammer and nails or as exotic as smoked seaweed that went for half the price in our communities.

  And there you were, offering me your projections about the future of my city. Your opinions of our political system were only a bit less horrifying than your attitude on race relations. You were one of the youngest—and most evenhanded—bigots I had ever met. The bagels were definitely in power, which was fine with you, but given the population breakdown it was only a matter of time before the spareribs took over—either us or the olés would be calling the shots in Gracie Mansion pretty soon. And didn’t I think so?

  “Ophelia, why are people food to you?”

  “What?”

  I put down my fork. There was no point in pretending any more, I had lost my appetite half an hour ago.

  “Food. Stuff you chew up in your mouth until it’s slimy and then leave behind as shit the next day.”

  “That’s a disgusting thing to say.”

  “But that’s what you’ve been saying most of the evening—fudge sticks, kumquats, bagels, zucchinis. You just called Herman Badillo a taco. Number one, it’s ignorant because tacos aren’t from Puerto Rico, and number two, your whole litany has turned the people in this city into material for a garbage disposal. And I’m just wondering why you do that?”

  “Look, I don’t have to sit here and be insulted.”

  “I’m not insulting you, I’m just questioning.”

  “Well, it’s a question that implies you think I’m shallow and a bigot.”

  “That’s true.”

  There was no sarcasm in my voice, because I felt none. I was just curious about why you thought the way you did, and still you kept looking at me thoroughly confused. You just hadn’t met a man who wanted absolutely nothing from you but honesty. It was working everywhere under your skin—a frantic search for the dusty file you had put away long ago after labeling it “response useless.” And when you finally unearthed it you spoke hesitantly, your voice so clouded with its dust that you took a sip of water to clear your throat.

  “You know, I was scared when I came to this city. Really scared. There were more people living on my one block than on the whole island where I grew up. And instead of getting better in seven years, it’s gotten worse. Because just when you think you’ve gotten a handle on it, there’s a new next-door neighbor or the Laundromat at the corner becomes a hole in the ground and the next year it’s a high rise with even more people for you not to know. A whole kaleidoscope of people—nothing’s just black and white here like in Willow Springs. Nothing stays put. So I guess the way I talk is my way of coming to terms with never knowing what to expect from anything or anybody. I’m not a bigot, but if I sound like one, I guess its because deep down I’m as frightened of change and difference as they are.”

  “What did you call me after that interview in my office?”

  “A bonbon.”

  For the first time that evening we laughed together, and it felt good.

  “Oh, I see, dark on the outside and white on the inside.”

  “Not necessarily, there are other varieties.”

  “Well, Ophelia, I guess your way is a bit more flexible than thinking of me as an Oreo. And I won’t ask you what flavor of bonbon you had in mind. But I’m wondering, what do you call yourself?”

  “If you remember, I answer to Cocoa.”

  It was a pity you didn’t like being called Ophelia. It was a lyrical name, pleasant to say because my tongue had to caress the roof of my mouth to get it out. Not that I’d have the opportunity to use it much. The evening was almost over, and we were both thankful for that—we had gotten through it with a great deal of difficulty. And yet, I couldn’t say why I felt a sense of incompletion when the check came. I didn’t have any set agenda at the start, but it seemed as if something important had not been accomplished.

  Surely, he jests. I swear, that’s the first thing that popped into my head when you asked me out again. I don’t know where that phrase came from—had to be something from my high school Shakespeare and you had been going on and on about him earlier in the evening. Just proves that Shakespeare didn’t have a bit of soul—I don’t care if he did write about Othello, Cleopatra, and some slave on a Caribbean island. If he had been in touch with our culture, he would have written somewhere, “Nigger, are you out of your mind?”

  Because that’s what I really meant to think. You must have seen that I couldn’t get out of there soon enough, and had gotten up so quickly from the table I forgot that my napkin was still on my lap. I had been trying to figure out whether to dump you at the door of the restaurant or at the corner while I tried to get a cab. But it takes a century to get a cab in the Village so that would mean your hanging around longer than either of us wanted. I had decided my best bet was to head straight for the subway after showing you my can of mace and Jiffy bag of black pepper, so you wouldn’t feel guilty about not wanting to offer to ride part of the way with me when—BAM—that came up. But you weren’t joking and that only left the alternative that you were psychotic. A guy like you couldn’t have been desperate for company. You weren’t bad looking, had a fairly decent personality, a damn good job. As a matter of fact, taking two steps backward, that made you prime stuff in an arena where anything over eighteen, toilet trained, and not interested in meeting your brother was considered a good catch. A masochist—had to be that. You were laboring under some extreme inferiority complex, thinking yourself such a total piece of junk that you would only date women who wanted absolutely nothing to do with you. The end to all this was clear: a black-lacquered bedroom, hardwood floors, black semigloss walls, and an antique set of razor straps and silk handcuffs. I’d read all about your type in Cosmo: ambivalent about your mothers, distant and uncaring fathers, should really be gay but thought other men were too good for you. I kicked myself because I should have known—the yellow roses, the top-drawer restaurant, the open and sensitive attempts at conversation, the gentle manipulation so that I spilled my guts and actually felt good about it. Oh, God, I should have known. Now it was a matter of finding a tactful way to turn you down so you wouldn’t start sobbing and pleading in the middle of the street. If I remembered right, Cosmo said that your type wasn’t given to
open violence, but would sink to degrading displays in public. I tried to keep my voice as low and even as possible.

  “Why would you want to see me again, George?”

  “I don’t believe that’s what I said.”

  “But you just—”

  “I said, I’d like you to see New York.”

  “Oh, well, then, there’s no need for you to worry about that. I do see New York—too much of it—every day.”

  “No, you ride the subway from your apartment to your job, and then you ride back. And I’ll lay even odds that if I took my compass and drew lines that radiated from your home and made a circle, you haven’t moved beyond an area much larger than Willow Springs for your shopping, entertainment, or friends. Am I right?”

  “So?”

  “So that’s why you still feel like a stranger to this city after seven years. And you can die here and feel that way if you confine yourself to the tourist ghettos that are being set up for you.”

  “I’m not a—”

  “No, you’re not a vacationing tourist. You live and play in the ghettos for our permanent tourists. And like any ghetto resident, you pay more for cramped, shoddy housing and the local support services than the rest of us. The mortgage on my house is less than the studio you’re renting on the Upper West Side. But you thought it was a find at six hundred dollars a month, and you know why? Because you’ve bought the illusion that this is where you have to live—midtown is New York, and you try to stay as close to it as possible. And if they stick you in Brooklyn or Queens, it’s downtown Brooklyn or Long Island City—the closer to a bridge, the better, right? Always facing midtown and so your back is turned to the rest of us. Most people are confined in ghettos by economic circumstances, so there’s no chance for them to grow and explore, to be enriched by the life of a city. And I just think it’s a little sad that here, of all places, the young and talented confine themselves by choice.”

  “So I should get out and see more of New York?”

  “You really should, Ophelia.”

  “With you as the tour guide?”

  “No. When you’re willing to open up your home to someone, aren’t you called a host?”

  Weird, weird, weird—weird weird. You for offering or me for accepting, I wasn’t sure. But we had one hell of a time that summer.

  It’s what we call in these parts a slow fall. The weather’s slow about changing, the leaves on the hickories and oaks are hanging on for dear life, the water millet’s still green, but with the wind blowing warm and steady from the east the fish won’t bite for spit, while the night air can bring a chill without a hint of frost in the morning. So it’s too early to dig the sweet potatoes and too late to chance a fresh crop of tomatoes. Miranda and Abigail are sitting out on the front porch, answering a letter they just got from Cocoa. It’s really Abigail doing the writing—she owns the box of good writing paper and her script is the prettiest—but Miranda looks over her shoulder as the referee. Although they gonna fight about what to tell or not to tell, Abigail shoving the paper and pen over to Miranda and saying, “You do it if you know so much,” Miranda saying she would if Abigail had bought decent paper with lines on it so her words don’t slant, and then Abigail saying that you can’t send a letter to a place as important as New York City on some no-class, plain, ruled paper—although it’s the same fight every letter they answer, it never occurs to either of them to write back to Cocoa separately.

  A letter comes once a month, addressed only to their joint box number—and it’s answered the very next day. It’s usually in there mixed up with the seed catalogues, the electric and phone bills, or an invoice from something Miranda or Abigail ordered from Sears or Montgomery Ward’s. But since Cocoa is smarter than them big companies, she don’t waste the time writing “Miss Abigail Day” or “Miss Miranda Day” on the front of her envelope. Both of them ladies done outlived two mail clerks already, so everybody knows Box #7 been belonging to the Days for over fifty years. It don’t matter who’s there first to pick it up, who opens the envelope. Cocoa’s letters always begin, “My Dears.”

  “We are so glad you are having a lovely time seeing New York.” Abigail says each sentence out loud before writing it down, giving Miranda a chance to nod approval, or in this case—

  “That don’t make no sense, Abigail. She been seeing New York for seven years.”

  “But her letter said that she was having a lovely time seeing New York, and I’m just telling her how glad we are.”

  “I know what her letter says, I got it right here. But it still don’t make no sense. What she been doing up there all this time, then?”

  “I don’t know, Miranda. She didn’t say what she been doing, she says, ‘I am now having a lovely time seeing New York.’”

  “Sounds fishy to me. You think Baby Girl is into them mind-altering drugs or something? The folks were just talking about that on my program this morning. It is just messing up them young people in Chicago.”

  “She ain’t in Chicago.”

  “Same difference. Ask her if she’s on them drugs.”

  “I ain’t putting down no such thing—make her think we don’t trust her.”

  “Well, then put it this way: ‘We are so glad that you are having a lovely time seeing New York, but exactly what is it that you see.’”

  “All right, that’s a little bit better.”

  “More than one way to skin a cat. We wouldn’t have to be trying to figure all this out if you’d let her call more often.”

  “Daddy always said no news is good news. My heart would be pounding every time that phone rang, so I’d rather have her write, if nothing important’s happening.” Abigail continues her letter. “As for us, we are in good health.”

  “Good as can be expected.” Miranda nods.

  “How is your weather? We are having a slow fall.”

  “That’s for sure.” Miranda looks up and down the main road. “I hate this old tricky weather. Throws everything off. Ain’t got but a handful of leaves falling on my compost pile and it’s already November. And like a fool I already seeded my new lavender and rosemary out at the other place. Late frost gonna kill ’em sure enough. Miserable, miserable.”

  “’Cause you don’t listen. I told you there was a red ring around the moon Easter Sunday. If that don’t mean a slow fall, nothing does.”

  “Red, purple, or pink, a spring moon can’t tell you nothing about fall weather. I don’t know where you picked that mess up, Abigail.”

  “I guess I picked it up the same place where I’m picking up my second planting of late tomatoes, while some folks is only getting one in before the frost hits.”

  “Well, I hope some folks is gonna get that letter finished to Baby Girl before the light fades. Where we at now?”

  “She wanna know what news we got.”

  “They got a new principal at her high school—old Feeling Sam done retired.”

  “Your principal, Mr. Samson Wilbright, has left Willow Springs High after thirty years of dedicated service.”

  “Good thing, too. Wonder somebody ain’t shot him over their daughter before now.”

  “He calmed down in later years, Miranda.”

  “He calmed down plenty after I got after him about patting on Baby Girl. Told him we weren’t raising no public toilet for him to be doing his business into—told him loud. What we ain’t touched since she was in diapers, he don’t touch.”

  “Lord, Miranda, I remember that day—in front of the whole auditorium. I was planning to go about it softer.”

  “Yeah, I know, that’s why I put on my hat and went with you. But I told him something soft too. Leaned over and whispered that I could fix it so the only thing he’d be able to whip out of his pants for the rest of his life would be pocket change.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “As God is my judge. And I had it all ready at the other place. I can’t stand a dirty, old—”

  “Think we should tell her about Junior Lee and Miss F
rances?”

  “Oh, yeah—now that’s some juicy news. And you know what I hear, Abigail? He’s taken to hanging around Ruby’s.”

  “Ruby’s got more sense than that.”

  “Don’t seem so. Hear she’s baking peach pies and frying up drumfish every night to beat the band. And that’s the last thing Ruby need to be doing. I was right there when Dr. Smithfield told her to take off some of that weight. Talking about she can’t count calories. And I told her she ain’t gotta count ’em. Just take her fishing pole down to The Sound and steam everything she catch, and everything she pull up out her garden, eat raw. But now Buzzard tells me him and Junior Lee is eating royal at Ruby’s—she ain’t had the nerve to tell me. And you know Buzzard’s gonna follow anyone to where there’s a greasy pot.”

  “Miranda, Junior Lee’s got to be fifteen years younger than Ruby.”

  “More than that, ’cause she lies about her age. Ruby could talk when I delivered her baby brother, Woody—the one got killed in the Second World War. And Irene named him after Woodrow Wilson, who was president then. So what that make Ruby?”

  “Too old for Junior Lee, that’s for sure.”

  “But Frances ain’t no girl, either. She must be going on sixty herself.”

  “Wonder why Junior Lee likes to take up with women so much older than him?”

  “’Cause he can use ’em. Don’t have to work and spends their money. But he’s barking up the wrong tree with Ruby—she can fix his butt in more ways than one.”

  Abigail goes back to her letter. “And besides Mr. Wilbright’s retirement, there is some sad news about Junior Lee and Miss Frances. They are having a few problems in their home …”

  “His whoring, his gambling, his drinking.”