Mama Day

by Gloria Naylor

  The day was gorgeous and clear. It seemed that every sailboat in the marina was out there on the water. The game was for you to appear annoyed but you were as excited as I was, because you enjoyed it whenever I did something impulsive. Those times were rare. How would you put it—I was so straight, I squeaked? But a little drama was in order for the occasion. I did wait until we were by ourselves on the bridge walk before I took your diaphragm out of its case.

  “George, you’re insane, you know that?”

  “A deal is a deal.”

  “Okay, go ahead.”

  “Should you do it or me?”

  “No, I want you to do it. Because later on you’ll turn around and say it was my idea, I was always the weird one. I’m just going to stand right here and remember every minute of this so I can tell our kids—in detail.”

  “That’s the point, sweetheart.”

  I held the diaphragm like a Frisbee and sent it flying over the railing. It spun out for a few feet under its own motion before the wind picked it up and kept it suspended in the air before us.

  “Oh, my God, it’s not going anywhere. This is so embarrassing.”

  Suddenly, it began a downward spiral, end over end, spinning past the outstretched wing of a gull, catching the bright glare from the sun before it was lost from our sight. We were laughing so hard, we couldn’t have seen it hit the water anyway. There was so much more than laughter in your eyes when you turned to me.

  “Have I ever told you …” you began.

  “Many times,” I said.

  Living in a place like Willow Springs, it’s sorta easy to forget about time. Guess ’cause the biggest thing it does is to bring about change and nothing much changes here but the seasons. And if we get a warm spring, a slow fall, and a light winter it don’t seem like even the seasons change much at all. Yeah, it could easily be one long summer here, with a few less leaves on some days, a few more flowers on others. It’s the same folks coming into the general store to pick up their supplies, the same group hitched up on chairs outside of Parris’s barbershop, the same heads leaving Reema’s all oiled up and curled. The smoke drifting up over the south woods from Dr. Buzzard’s still might as well be painted on a picture, it’s always there. Like the droning from his beehives out by Chevy’s Pass, the pounding of the ocean water against the east bluff, the creaking from the wooden slats on the bridge over The Sound: a still life. Four pictures would just about do it, one for each season, where you’d have to look real close to see a gray hair or so inching around some temples, a little extra roll starting over some belt buckles. But slow, real slow. So slow it’s like it’s not happening at all. Until it happens. Overnight, some say. Living here you can see how they’re right and they’re wrong. It’s all one night, one day—one season. Time don’t crawl and time don’t fly; time is still. You do with it what you want: roll it up, stretch it out, or here we just let it lie.

  Reminders do come around that it’s there, mostly in watching children grow. There’s a whole passel in Willow Springs, different ages, shapes, and sizes. Some leave, some stay and add their own brood to replace the faces that eventually gonna fade off into the surrounding oaks and the mist coming up from The Sound. Every time you look, there’s a new one born somewhere. Reema’s done her part to keep up—she’s had close to a dozen till it’s hard to get their names straight. Now, Bernice done had only one but it’s still the same problem. She loaded that baby down with every name in the book: Charles Somebody Harrison Somebody-Else Duvall. We called him Chick. That’s what he looked like, toddling around: little pecan head sitting on a scrawny neck, two bright buttons for eyes, and a feathery mess of hair she couldn’t keep slicked down for nothing. He’s gonna have Ambush’s coloring but her build, kinda narrow and bony. Folks had to stop calling him Chick ’cause Bernice would pitch herself a fit whenever she heard it. But who could remember all that other mess she tied onto the child?

  Things simmered down when she traded in that old Chevy for a white convertible. She would have him strapped into his baby chair beside her, two sets of harnesses over his chest, although nobody drives more than twenty miles an hour on the main road. And he’d just be swiveling his tiny neck around, waving at folks. Somebody gave him a red plastic flag and she couldn’t pry it from him even in his sleep. So with Bernice giving him them daily airings in that open-top car and him waving that red flag like he was on parade or something, we started calling him Little Caesar, and it’s easy to see why that name stuck. You couldn’t find a king that’s treated better than that child. He’s almost four now and his feet hardly touch the ground. Bernice takes him everywhere in that car, even the hundred yards down the bluff to visit his grandma Pearl. And when she brings him to the store, after unstrapping them two sets of harnesses, if there’s the slightest bit of mud around, she’ll pick him up and carry him. What’s the point of him having a dozen pair of shoes when he never gets the soles scuffed? At this age, he’s gonna outgrow ’em all within the next six months anyway. But that don’t stop Bernice from both buying and sewing enough for Little Caesar to have two changes of clothes each day. And she changes him, too, morning and evening, for them daily rides.

  Folks had hoped she’d have another baby to save this one, but it don’t look that way. Guess it’s gonna be up to Ambush to balance things out. He’s proud as punch of his son, but he ain’t lost his head. When Little Caesar’s with him, the child walks like anybody else, and Ambush has been known to give him a swat or two when he acts up. But never in front of Bernice. You don’t breathe too close to that boy with Bernice around. Literally don’t breathe. ’Cause he’s always been a friendly child—will come up to you and spread them knobby arms, not wanting candy or a dime or so, but for you to pick him up and hug him. And it’s hard not to, with them bright eyes and that little pointed head bouncing up and down on his scrawny neck. But Bernice is there in a flash to grab him away—kissing strangers will give him germs. And since when any of us been strangers? Most don’t take offense; she waited a long time for that baby. But the older heads fear that trouble is coming. When you raise a god instead of a child, you’re bound to be serving him for the rest of your days.

  Same thing holds when you marry a god. Not that Junior Lee got anybody up in heaven worrying about losing their job, but you couldn’t tell Ruby that. Fact is, you can’t tell Ruby nothing lately, and if you a female over seven and under seventy, you better not stop by that porch to yell a good morning. Folks thinking Ruby is close to losing her mind over Junior Lee. What goes around comes around, some say. Didn’t she run Frances crazy? Where is all her roots now that Junior Lee won’t stay home nights? She done accused every woman in Willow Springs—with the exception of Mama Day—of fooling around with him. Wherever Junior Lee is sneaking, it ain’t to a single house in this place. Ain’t nobody over seven and under seventy that desperate. No, even the ones who might find it challenging to try to tame a good-looking, no-good man wouldn’t come within a mile of Junior Lee. He’s driving that Coupe de Ville Ruby bought him beyond the bridge to where some unsuspecting woman ain’t heard of the way May Ellen died. Where they ain’t had a night’s rest broken by them piercing screams echoing from that brick house on the edge of the south woods. Uh, uh, them that believes in roots and them that don’t, all know that child died a painful death. And that is fact enough to leave anything Ruby says is hers alone.

  Even the men done stopped bothering with Junior Lee. Ruby going on about they setting him up with their sisters and daughters. That’s when folks was certain she’d about lost her mind. Any man who’d lose more money than you at a poker table and then be happy to turn right back around and drink you under that same table is the last thing you’d bring home to meet any woman you cared about. Dr. Buzzard is about his only friend, him having neither sister, daughter, nor girlfriend for Ruby to feel threatened by. But Dr. Buzzard says Ruby knows better than to mess with him. He’s got a ying for her yang, a do for her don’t—and anything else she can come up wit
h. But while he’s rattling them buckeyes and black-cat bones hanging around his neck, it ain’t lost on the listener that he’s speaking awful soft.

  But with Little Caesar growing up and Ruby’s marriage winding down, it ain’t really what you’d call change. It’s all happened before and it’ll happen again with a different set of faces. So time’s doing what it’s always done, standing still this summer here in Willow Springs. We might as well be a picture postcard as Dr. Buzzard’s blue pickup comes wobbling over the bridge with Cocoa this mid-August. No different this August than the last, even though he’s got an extra passenger. We’re finally gonna see this new husband, while he ain’t gonna see nothing new at all.

  You never say never. That was good advice Mama Day gave me when I was growing up. But some things you just know are never going to happen—or do you? Mountains flying. Birds on the moon. You giving up the league playoffs to come home with me. Then again, there are degrees to those impossibilities. Since the earth is really a satellite, you could say the mountain ranges are flying through space. Man’s survived on the moon and so could parakeets in specialized environments. And if World War III was looming with the Russians planning to use the site of the Super Bowl as ground zero, you’d probably say, What the hell, for that year at least.

  It took a little less than an atom bomb though. I just shut up. Shut completely up, and went about the business of settling into a future with you. My children were going to have a fanatic for a father, and that’s all there was to it. You didn’t have a preference but I prayed hard for sons, knowing I was going to battle to the death before you’d turn one of my daughters into the neighborhood’s wide receiver. Family planning. Each room in the house, the front yard, our very location, had a new point of reference. Our daily routines took on a different edge: this would probably be the last year we’d be reading the newspapers in silence, dropping only one quart of milk into the shopping cart, sleeping in late on the weekends. And even the sex was different: having that goal gave it a deeper excitement and a strange tinge of reverence that wasn’t there before. Making a baby. Our bodies could really do this—bring about a miracle? And that feeling of being involved in something special flowed over into the way we looked at each other.

  A peace settled into the house that summer, and at the beginning of August I quietly went about preparing for my vacation. No hints. No accusations. I was through with all that nonsense. I don’t know why it bothered me so much—Grandma and Mama Day didn’t seem to care. As far as they were concerned, you could do no wrong. I didn’t think they’d be bought off so easily with a few lousy Mother’s Day cards and a call once or twice a year. I wrote them every month, but the sun sure seemed to shine on you. The boy’s working hard for you, leave him be. He’s there when you go back, ain’t he? I would have given anything to see what kind of propaganda you put in those notes on their birthdays. I already knew how large the checks were because I balanced the account. But it had to be more than the money. I guess they knew all along what it took me four years to accept: you leave well enough alone.

  So I was minding my own business, playing a game of clipping grocery coupons for Pampers and Enfamil. Just the ones with no expiration dates, to be on the safe side.

  “Okay, okay, okay—I can’t take the nagging. I’m going home with you next week.”

  I never looked up. “George, we haven’t had a fight in over three months. Is that too much for you?”

  “I know when I’m licked. Up to my butt in new construction, a six-figure commission waiting in the balance—count ’em, six—and the Pats going to the playoffs as sure as I’m standing here. But a woman’s tongue is a mighty—”

  “Because I can give you what you’re looking for. I am more than ready to give you exactly what—”

  “But I just want to warn you, separate vacations have been the salvation of this marriage.”

  “My patience has been the salvation of this marriage.”

  The hand that covered mine was wide and strong. The blunt fingertips darkened by blueprint ink with the thumb permanently flattened from holding a compass, the fine hairs thinning along the knuckles, the veins beginning to push their way through the tightening skin. The hand brought my chin up firmly to make me meet your eyes.

  “I think you’re right.”

  No, I was wrong. And as we crossed over the bridge, squeezed into the front of Dr. Buzzard’s truck, was that the time to turn everything around? I’ve asked myself that over and over these years. At what point could we have avoided that summer? At the beginning of that bridge? The beginning of so many others? And when I try, George, when I try to pick a point at which we could have stopped, there is none. I don’t think it would have mattered if we had come a year before or a year after. You and I would have been basically the same, and time definitely stands still in Willow Springs. No, any summer we crossed over that bridge would be the summer we crossed over.

  II

  Miranda is having the kind of day that’s best spent in bed. Everything is determined to go haywire and she wishes it could just go on without her. Edgy. Start the morning with your nerves sticking out all over the place and you’re bound to be upsetting whatever you touch all day. Them cakes took one look at her evil face and refused to rise. Out-and-out refused, as if it hadn’t been enough that the button popped off her best Sunday dress to roll God knows where under all that clutter in the closet, and she spilled the last bit of shoe polish right in the middle of the bathroom floor before finding a big old run in her only pair of stockings. And calling Abigail for anything is to risk having her head handed to her on a platter. The way she been going on across the road all week, you’d think the governor of New York was coming. If she ain’t put that rug out on the clothesline and beat it fifty times, she ain’t beat it once. Well, that house’ll be good and clean when the folks come to view her body, ’cause that’s what she’s working herself up to.

  Miranda yanks the oven door open and eyes the cake pans as if she could will the batter to rise. That’s what she gets for trying to be fancy. Stay plain, no pain, Daddy always said. If that advice stood eighty years ago, it stands now, especially looking at this mess that’s passing for angel food. She could whip up a peach cobbler with her eyes closed, and that’s what she was gonna do. Abigail can be over there with all the shrimp Newburg and crab soufflés she wants, that boy’s gonna know they don’t eat like that everyday. Everyday? They never eat like that. It’s iffy when Abigail bakes chicken, so Lord help them poor little crawdaddies drowning in her cream sauce. And all them rich foods ain’t right for him anyway. Baby Girl says he has to watch his heart. It’s funny, Miranda thinks, a good-hearted boy with a bad heart.

  The hot pan slips out of the dishtowel and burns her on the left wrist. Blast it all to Hades! The cake up-ends, splattering all over the bottom of the stove and cabinets. She brings her wrist up to her mouth to wet the burn as she kicks aside the pan to get to the icebox—it was going into chicken feed anyway. Running an ice cube up and down her wrist, she tries to remember where she put her ointment. Be too much to ask for it to be where it’s supposed to be. A whole tinful shoved into that side drawer right after Candle Walk. All she did that night was to rub more blistered fingers and arms than she could count. Some Candle Walks go by without a murmur and others see her using every bit of oak bark, red sumac, and mallow root she could work into a little wax and benne oil. No point in opening the drawer, that tin done probably walked away like everything else this morning, and she weren’t about to make up no more. The ice helps to draw the heat and she figures it won’t blister. And if it do, it’ll just round out the picture for that boy: a beat-up old woman with buttons missing on her dress, runs in her stockings, and a no-’count pair of shoes.

  Miranda leans against the sink, crosses her arms over her chest, and takes a deep breath. When absolutely nothing is going right, it means you started out on the wrong foot. So it’s gonna be wrong foot after wrong foot unless you go back and straighten it ou
t. This day began all wrong ’cause she’s acting like a stranger’s coming, and George ain’t no stranger. She’s never laid eyes on him, but that means less than nothing. She knew this boy. Knew him from that first call in New Orleans and the last four years ain’t brought no surprises. He’s strong willed, dead set in his ways, proper to a fault, as Daddy would say, and he worships the ground Baby Girl walks on—without being about to admit none of it. Yeah, Miranda thinks, picking up her broom, that’s exactly who’s coming. And since you wouldn’t let a dog see this trailer, the state it’s in, clean up this mess, go rake your yard, and pick yourself a few peaches for a cobbler.

  The chickens that run loose around her trailer come scrambling to her feet when she lets herself out the back door.

  “There ain’t nothing in this bag for y’all.” She pushes ’em away with the rake. “This here is angel food and you’re nothing but devils.”

  They flock behind her to the side bushes as she scatters a few crumbs over their far side near the woods. There’s squawking and feathers flying as the chickens scatter through the bushes to reach the crumbs.

  “That’s right, no messing in my yard today—company’s coming. And anybody caught over here after I rake this ground is going straight into the pot.”

  This was gonna be the last year she’d be bothered with these loose hens—nothing but pets. But old habits die hard. Miranda don’t spot her frizzly black hen. Now, where was Clarissa? It ain’t like her to miss a free meal. She begins cleaning up the stray leaves and sandy gravel along the side of the trailer, making her way toward the front. Stopping a moment to stretch her back, she glances along the main road. Couldn’t be she got run over by a car, Clarissa’s never up past them dogwoods. And she’s too old to be setting. Might have gone off some place to die—it’s about time. Yeah, this was gonna be the last batch for her. She couldn’t be spending her last little energy running after loose hens. Miranda hears a scratching and squawking near the front steps. Lord, she done got herself hung up under the trailer.