Mama Day

by Gloria Naylor

  A shotgun blast echoes in the woods. Another follows soon behind. Well, I guess Buzzard got himself a haint. Just then Ambush lets Dr. Smithfield out the front door.

  “Somebody coon hunting?” Dr. Smithfield asks.

  “You might say that.” Miranda nods.

  “Mama Day, you been out here all this time? I feel awful bad.”

  “Naw, Ambush, I wanted to. Let me just go on in and say goodbye to Bernice, and then if Dr. Smithfield don’t mind, he can drop me home.”

  “I’ll do that,” says Ambush.

  “No, boy, you’ve had yourself a day.”

  “I think we all have.” Dr. Smithfield touches her arm. “And it would be my pleasure, Miss Miranda.”

  Bernice’s color is a little better and she’s propped up on the pillows. She kinda bows her head when Miranda comes into the bedroom. Miranda sits on the edge of the bed and lifts her chin.

  “I told him, Mama Day. I told him what I did.”

  “Well, it was for you to tell. What he say to you?”

  “He said I got them cysts on my ovaries, just like you said. He don’t think nothing’s wrong with my liver, but he’s gonna take that urine to the lab. And he gave me these here pain killers.”

  Miranda looks at the box and nods.

  “That’s all?”

  “Yeah, ’cause he says the cysts will probably just go away since I won’t be taking them pills anymore, and …” Bernice’s eyes fill up with tears.

  “And?” Miranda’s heart starts pounding.

  “And there ain’t no reason for me not to conceive after them cysts clear up, because my womb is sound as a drum. And when I told him about them teas, he said I had you to thank for that.”

  “So what you sitting here crying for?” Miranda wipes the tears from Bernice’s face.

  “I don’t know, I just …”

  “I saw the room you got ready for the baby, Bernice, and it’s awful pretty. Musta taken you a lot of work. Folks say I can do things most can’t do. Whether that’s true or not, I can help you if you willing to work with me as hard as you worked on that room. I’m gonna need you and Ambush both in the beginning.”

  “Anything, Mama Day, any—”

  “Hush, now, and let me finish. The hard work is just the beginning. And I ain’t sure yet exactly how it will all end. But if it turns out that we gotta go to the other place together in the end, what happens there we gotta keep a secret. Not a secret for now or a secret for then—but a secret forever. Even from Ambush. You understand that, Bernice? You were willing to give up your life to have a baby, but strange as it seems, it might be harder for you to keep your silence.”

  The room is so quiet they can hear the little glass prisms in the other room tinkle.

  “I told you, I’d do anything.”

  Time will tell, Miranda thinks. Time will tell. “But now it’s time to get your insides healed,” she says aloud. “Get yourself a good rest tonight. And tomorrow afternoon I’ll come on back to check up on you. And next week sometime, I’ll tell you how we can begin all this.”

  “There ain’t never gonna be no way to thank you, Mama Day.”

  Miranda pats her shoulder. “So you ain’t got nothing to worry about, do you?”

  When they reach the branch to the bridge road, Dr. Smithfield argues hard with Miranda about leaving her off there. He shoulda learned after all these years he was wasting his time. If he weren’t willing to forcibly hold her round the neck with one arm and speed off, steering the car with the other hand, when she said she’d made up her mind to walk home from there, she was gonna get out and walk. She waits until she sees his tail lights way off in the distance, approaching the head of the bridge, before she goes back and picks up a stout stick she’d seen lying at the edge of the road. She leans her weight on it and makes her way slowly north toward home. The night is so thick she can tell she is there only by the scraping of her feet and the tap, tapping of the stick in the loose gravel. A moonless night with only the call of the katydids and marsh frogs. A night to swallow you up, the stars hid by clouds, and memory guiding her tired feet home. The tap, tapping of the stick in the loose gravel. Daddy, you said live on, didn’t you? Just live on. Her and Abigail teasing John-Paul about the cane he needed in later years. Grabbing it and running a ways off from him on this very road. Her tossing John-Paul’s stick to Abigail—Abby, do it look like a sugar cane? No, Little Mama, too crooked for a sugar cane—Abigail tossing it back. Then, Abby, do it look like a candy cane? No, Little Mama, too big for a candy cane. You’ll find out what kinda cane it is, heifers—John-Paul taking his stick and giving them a gentle swat on the behind—just live on.

  Miranda smiles into the darkness. My, that was a beautiful walking stick. Hickory. Studded with brass nails on the curved handle, polished so they shone like gold. And the long, sleek bodies of them snakes carved so finely down its length that when he turned it they seemed to come alive. The tap, tapping of the stick. So few times like those. No time to be young. Little Mama. The cooking, the cleaning, the mending, the gardening for the woman who sat in the porch rocker, twisting, twisting on pieces of thread. Peace was gone. But I was your child, too. The cry won’t die after all these years, just echoes from a place lower and lower with the passing of time. Being there for mama and child. For sister and child. Being there to catch so many babies that dropped into her hands. Gifted hands, folks said. You have a gift, Little Mama. John-Paul’s eyes so sad. It ain’t fair that it came with a high price, but it did. I can’t hold this home together by myself. And Abby, she ain’t strong like you. We need you, Little Mama. Gifted hands, folks said. Gave to everybody but myself. Caught babies till it was too late to have my own. Saw so much heartbreak, maybe I never wanted my own. Maybe I never thought about it. Except that once. That one summer of the boy with the carnival smile. Lean as an ear of Silver Queen corn and lips just as sweet. The tap, tapping of the stick on up the gravel road. Make no kinda sense, them memories. Ain’t even had airplanes that summer—or automobiles. Just the bathing, clothing, and feeding of the woman who sat in the porch rocker twisting, twisting on pieces of thread. How could she have gone, with Abigail terrified to go near that rocker, trembling and choking for air when the woman rises up to scream, Peace, Peace? How can I go with you? she asked him. One foot before the other, he told her. A voice dancing on the fading night wind. Mama and child. Mama and sister. Too heavy a load to take away. Why, even Abigail called me Little Mama till she knew what it was to be one in her own right. Abigail’s had three and I’ve had—Lord, can’t count ’em—into the hundreds. Everybody’s mama now.

  The old Buick comes creeping down the road toward her, nothing but the parking lights on. It stops and the window on the driver’s side rolls down.

  “I thought that was you, Mama Day. I been sitting up by your trailer, waiting.”

  “Frances?” She peers at the woman through the darkness. “What you doing out this time of night?” And she coulda added, “looking that way,” ’cause Frances is a mess. Hair all tangled and pushed up on the side of her head. Eyes all red and sunk in. A house dress dirty as it is wrinkled, and missing two buttons. You wouldn’t know the woman who strutted out to church on Sundays, creases so pressed she wouldn’t let nobody sit near her in the pew.

  “He’s up at Ruby’s, Mama Day. I followed him there, the lying dog. Said she was only fixing him supper. But supper’s been over, they done turned out the lights, and Junior Lee’s still in there. I ain’t letting Ruby take my man.”

  She’d be doing you a favor, Miranda thinks, but she’s too tired to be getting into all this nonsense tonight with Frances.

  “Well, if you wanted him so bad, why didn’t you just go in there and get him? Then y’all can try to work this out.”

  “I done tried talking to him, but Ruby got something on him, sure as I’m sitting here. What would he want with that fat, ugly woman? ’Cause she’s feeding him something in his food—everybody knows she trucks with that stuff. And
that’s why I was coming to you. You gotta give me something to get him back.”

  “The only thing I can give you is some good advice—and by the looks of you, you ain’t willing to take that tonight.”

  “Mama Day, you just gotta help me. I know Junior Lee’s not much, but I ain’t young no more.”

  “Neither is Ruby. And if she found a way to take him, you can find a way to get him back.”

  “I told you how she did it.”

  “And I’m telling you—if she did or not, I don’t truck with that stuff. A man don’t leave you unless he wants to go, Frances. And if he’s made up his mind to go, there ain’t nothing you, me, or anybody else can do about that.”

  “But she’s messing with his mind!”

  “Then you mess with it too.”

  “That’s just what I’m planning,” Frances says before she cuts on her headlights and speeds on down the road.

  She ain’t understood a word I said. Miranda sighs and makes the last little slope toward home. The mind is everything. She can dig all the holes she wants around Ruby’s door. Put in all the bits of glass and black pepper, every silver pin and lodestone she’ll find some fool to sell her. Make as many trips to the graveyard she wants with his hair, her hair, his pee, her pee. Walk naked in the moonlight stinking with Van-Van oil—and it won’t do a bit of good. ’Cause the mind is everything. When she passes the patch of burnt pines just around the bend from Abigail’s house, she throws away her stick. If she can’t make it from here to home without that thing, she might as well curl up and die.

  Abigail had gone to bed, but she’d left their candle burning. Miranda mounts the porch steps, removes the hurricane lamp cover, and blows it out. It’s about half gone. That’ll let Abigail know in the morning what time she came back. Many a night that candle burned itself out, and the new one placed there half gone too. But weren’t no slow babies keeping me this time, Abigail—no, weren’t no babies at all. She stands on the porch for a minute, frowning over at her trailer. Then she looks back up the road and nods. So that’s what the air was telling her. She knew now for certain that her and Bernice would end up at the other place, and she knew what had to be done there. It was gonna be tricky though, real tricky.

  Them last few feet across the road to her trailer seemed the hardest to make this night. There’s a plate on her kitchen table, double wrapped in foil and next to it the letter they were writing to Cocoa. Miranda lifts up the foil and sniffs at the aroma of shrimp fried in onions and tomatoes over a pile of seasoned rice. Bless you, Abigail, but I’m too tired to swallow my own spit. Sitting down and stretching out her aching legs, she lets her hand drop over the letter tucked into the flap of the envelope. It’s for her to add the last line in her own writing, fold up, and seal. Usually, all she’s got is a P.S.—Find yourself a husband. But now as she glances back over it … We are so glad that you are having a lovely time seeing New York … She wonders why it hadn’t hit her earlier. Baby Girl was seeing New York with someone. Special enough that she wrote about him, but not enough to call him by name. The night air will do that, Miranda thinks, it’ll make so many things clear.

  She opens the back door of her trailer and stands behind the screen, listening to the soft flutter of her loose chickens roosting among the low tree branches. She was still finding eggs out there among the bush. And one or two even setting. This slow fall had fooled even them. Good thing, though. She’d need to bring a few of them chicks in here for the winter. Fix them up a box, get ’em used to her touch and smell. Then she’d take the box out to the other place. Miranda counts on her fingers. Yeah, the little pullets would be laying easy by March. But the rest was gonna be tricky, real tricky. Well, she’d worry about that come spring. She heaves a heavy sigh and closes the door. Going back to the table, she licks the envelope and seals it, pressing her thumb along the edge, without adding her usual postscript. Naw, this time she’ll send no reminders. This time just let things ride.

  A week later Dr. Buzzard done drawn himself twice the crowd in front of Parris’s barbershop and tripled the number of haints he fought off in the south woods. Started out selling his mojo hands for a dollar-fifty—genuine graveyard dust and three-penny nails in a red flannel bag—when he’d used it to scatter two of them demons out of his sight. But now it’s three dollars ’cause there was six of them suckers: two hanging off an oak tree, changing from monkeys to black cats and back again, two growing big as cows with gleaming yellow teeth and trying to stomp his still to pieces, and the other two raising general hell. He stood his ground, he did. ’Cause he had him some powerful stuff working. He ain’t never seen a haint yet who could come up against his mojo hand.

  “Sure you ain’t used no silver bullets?” Miranda says, coming by on her way from the grocery store. The crowd parts to let her move toward the front, and gets real still to listen.

  “What’s that, Mama Day?” Dr. Buzzard kinda squints his eyes.

  “Silver bullets: See, I was over at the Duvalls’ the night you talking about, and I heard gunshots coming from them woods and an awful lot of yelling. So I’m just figuring that maybe you put some silver bullets in your shotgun to use on them haints—everybody knows regular bullets won’t do no good.”

  “No, I never bothered to use that remedy myself.” Dr. Buzzard starts sweating, and it ain’t a bit hot. “But if you heard a gun go off, could be somebody was shooting at coons.”

  “Or a coon shooting.”

  Miranda leaves the crowd laughing and stamping its feet. Dr. Buzzard’s sales was certain to fall off a little this afternoon. Ambush’s mama is on her way into the beauty parlor: it being Saturday, she’s to get her hair pressed and curled for services tomorrow. Folks often wondered why Pearl bothered; she was just gonna mess it all up, hollering and rolling in the middle of the church aisle. If getting into heaven meant being heard by the Lord, Pearl had herself a guaranteed ticket.

  “Ain’t it awful,” she says to Miranda, nodding toward Dr. Buzzard’s crowd. “It makes you downright embarrassed being part of the Negro race, with all them ignorant superstitions. Reverend Hooper says we all should get together and run Dr. Buzzard out of Willow Springs—this is a Christian place and he’s doing the devil’s work.”

  Miranda shifts her heavy bag and stares into Pearl’s buck eyes. She ain’t been over to see her son’s wife but once this week, and that was to tell Bernice what a burden her getting sick all the time was to Ambush. Never a kindly how-do or may I help you.

  “Well, Pearl, the devil—like the Lord—works in mysterious ways. And maybe he’s using Buzzard to let folks see the big difference between the way he’s living his life and the way you’re living yours.”

  “Why would the devil do that? It would only bring disciples to the Lord.”

  “Maybe the devil don’t see it that way.”

  Pearl stands there kinda puzzled; she ain’t got the reputation of being the quickest mind on the island. Finally, she shrugs. “But anyway, speaking of devilment, Mama Day”—she leans a little closer to whisper—“the deacon board met this week, and they gonna read Frances out of the church.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “All kinds of reasons—it breaks my heart to tell you. You know she’s been driving up there to the widow Ruby’s house at night … You musta seen that Buick pass your way on the main road.”

  “I ain’t seen nothing.”

  “Sure enough? Even I’ve seen her in that old Buick.”

  “Well, I don’t make it out to prayer meeting as much as you, so I miss the chance to find out what folks is doing in the evening.”

  “But anyway, seems that she’s been harassing Ruby something terrible, talking about Ruby’s stealing her husband—and she and Junior Lee weren’t even married to begin with.”

  “Do tell?”

  “Uh, huh. Just living common law. And to top it all, she’s been up there at Ruby’s sprinkling salt on her doorstep, throwing eggs up against the porch, and Lord knows what
other kinda advice she got from that fool over there. But the last straw was when Ruby came out one morning and found a hog’s head swinging from the limb of her peach tree—had a red onion stuffed in its mouth and nine little bits of paper with Ruby’s name written on ’em. Well, Ruby took her before the deacon board. Said here she was a proper widow woman, trying to make ends meet by renting out the extra room in her house to Junior Lee—and besides that, for appearances and all, her and Junior Lee was gonna get married, right there in church come spring—and she didn’t see why she had to be subject to such hoodoo going-ons from Frances.”

  “What Frances say to that?”

  “Frances told ’em all to go to hell—stood right there in Reverend Hooper’s office, called him and the deacon board a bunch of hypocrites. Said they all knew Ruby was working roots, and them that ain’t slept with her themselves was just scared of her. So that’s why they even bothered to call a meeting on something weren’t none of their business in the first place. Lord, these are some evil days—bring Your judgment on.”

  “Well, I gotta be moving along, Pearl.”

  “But what you think about all this, Mama Day?”

  “I think the Lord sits high and He looks low, Pearl. And sometimes He’s gotta look a little lower than other times.”