In a patient tone, softly, in wonder, Uniqua said, “Right there, Mama. At the bottom. Can’t you read it?”
Abby gave an embarrassed laugh. “Chile, your mama didn’t stay in school too long.” She looked at Uniqua, with a smile beggin Uniqua to laugh. “If I had’a I wouldn’t a had you! Now point to where I sign this thing.”
Uniqua pointed and watched the laborious effort it took for Abby to sign her name.
Uniqua frowned slightly. “Date it, Mama.”
Abby sighed as she handed the card to Uniqua. “You do it for me, baby. You my big girl, let me see if you know how to do it.”
Uniqua was very comfortable with her mother’s love and had no fear to speak her own mind, so she shook her head no and said, “Uh Uhh, you do it. You the mother.”
“Don’t make me mad, Uniqua!”
Uniqua put her hand on her mother’s arm. “You can’t read too good, can you, Mama?”
“No, not too good, but a little!” Abby smiled. “Enough.”
The child was persistent. “No, it isn’t enough, Mama.” Uniqua pulled a book out of her book bag. “Here, this is a fifth grade book.” She opened the book and pointed to a paragraph. “Read this.”
Uniqua took the book, squinting her eyes at the words. “He … ran off … down … the … av … av … aven … av …”
“Avenue, Mama.”
Abby handed the book back, shamed, trying not to get angry. “Well, you can read, Uniqua. That’s good enough for me.”
“You can read too, Mama. I’ll teach you. You got to know how to read. You’re my mama!”
Well, you know Abby let Uniqua start teachin her to read. Abby thought it would wear off, fade away with time, but every day Uniqua came home from school, she sang out, “School time!” and Abby did it because she loved her daughter.
In about eight weeks’ time Abby noticed she could understand a lot more going on around her and could read a little bit of everything she picked up (which she did a lot at that time). In six months’ time, Abby was going to the library with Uniqua and even got her own card. She discovered she LIKED to read and there were some things she didn’t want Uniqua to read with her. One day she looked up and she was going to the library by herself! And finding what she wanted, alone! Abby said to herself, “Hot damn almighty! You doin alright, girl!”
Then, after one of those weekend card parties, Uniqua put her hands on her tiny hips and said, “Mama! Don’t anyone at my school talk like you, cussin and all! I see the parents of them other children and they are not cussin even when they’re sposed to be mad! You got to stop cussin less you real, real mad and can’t nobody hear you but me. I don’t want no cussin mama anymore.” Uniqua put that hand that was usually on her hip, around her mother. “You too sweet to cuss anyway.”
Abby looked at her daughter, thinkin, “Now this chile is not goin to run my life. I’M the mama, not her. Who she think she is to tell me what to do? Who puts the bread on this table? I can cuss if I want to.” She said to Uniqua, “Go sit down and stop tryin to run my damn life! I’m grown. I supports us. You just keep goin to school and mind your damn manners!”
Uniqua put her head down, turning to go, said, “Only little children sposed to have manners, Mama?”
“No, everybody is sposed to have manners!”
Uniqua smiled up at Abby, “Then let’s both of us stop cussin and we’ll be happy again.” She hugged her mother and they laughed together. Abby buried her face in her child’s hair, thinking, “Lawd, what am I goin to do with this here you done give me? She just too smart.”
Uniqua held her mother and spoke softly. “And, Mama, you aren’t pretty when you get drunk with your friends at them card parties. Your clothes look all messed up and your hair …”
Abby broke loose from the embrace. “You betta leave me alone, girl!”
But Abby began to watch her mouth around Uniqua and stopped everybody else from cursing on the card-playing weekends. You know some of them stopped coming and went somewhere else to play. Abby would sometimes go there. But Abby could read real good now and sometimes she was in the middle of a book she didn’t want to put down or just didn’t feel like hearing all the same old things at the card games.
Now, Abby was young and she wanted love. But she had never, since Uniqua was about four years old, let any man spend the night. Uniqua had never seen her in bed with anybody, no matter how much Abby liked him. Abby remembered how she had felt around men and her mother and she didn’t want Uniqua to disrespect her or feel that way about her. She wanted respect from Uniqua. So she had decided to wait until she wanted to marry someone. She did want to be married someday. Even have another child.
Then she fell in love or what felt like it. His name was Torchy Liver. Anyone might have guessed that was not his real name, but a woman in love, you know. She didn’t care right then. Abby let Torchy go further than anyone else had done. She thought, “We love each other. We’ll get married.”
But Torchy didn’t work steady … yet. He kept plannin to. When he did work it was only for a few days then something went wrong. “The boss is racist. The pay too low. The sun too hot. The wind too cold. The hours too long. I hurt my back.”
Uniqua was used to talkin honest and openly to Abby, so one day when Torchy wasn’t there yet, Uniqua asked, “Is he goin to be my other parent, Mama?”
Abby smiled. “Do you want him to be, baby?”
Uniqua stuck her finger in her sandwich. “Well … ah … well, if you do.”
Abby grinned. “I love him. I want to marry him or he sure wouldn’t be stayin here all night, sometimes.”
Uniqua held her sandwich in the air, impaled on her finger, asked, “When he stays here … all night … in that room with you … do you all … DO something?”
Abby put her hand on both her hips. “Now, listen here! That ain’t none of your business, young lady.” She raised a finger to shake in Uniqua’s face.
Uniqua softly interrupted her. “You my mother, aren’t you?
“You know I’m the mother. You just seem to forget you the chile!”
Uniqua held her mother’s finger. “Don’t that make you my business … Mother?”
Abby snatched her finger away from Uniqua. “Not that part!”
Uniqua sounded like she was about to cry. “We separated then?”
Abby sighed one of her real tired sighs. “Get outta here. Go … go look at TV, read or somethin.”
Uniqua, with her head down, walked slowly to her room.
That night, after Torchy had eaten the dinner Abby had cooked and fixed so nice for him, they lay across her bed. Abby asked him about when they were goin to get married. Torchy laughed and patted his naked stomach. “Girl, what chu talkin bout?”
She smiled and patted his stomach too. “Marriage. A family. You know.”
“Girl, I got to have a job and somethin to raise a famly with. Ain’t they gonna put you off welfare if you get married? I ain’t got no … plans … on takin … no … extra bills and things …” He thought of his full stomach. “Right now.”
“Don’t you love me?” She smiled into his face.
“Shu, I love you. But that … that ain’t got nothin to do with it.”
Abby looked serious, but not fussy, “Well, when you goin to get a job? And keep it?”
Torchy laughed and pat her on her behind. “Only the Lord knows in whitey’s world.”
Abby didn’t laugh. “There some black men workin. Steady.”
He looked at his toothpick. “Yea, that’s right. And they kissin somebody’s ass.”
She sat up. “Even the President kisses somebody’s ass! Least they got somethin to work for. Somebody to love.”
Torchy sat up. He didn’t like it when women talked this way. “Well, baby, they got more’n me. I ain’t got chick or chile. Just me. And I don’t take no shit off nobody to get … or keep … a mutha-fuckin job.”
Abby lay back on the bed, wondering where her brain had been. She said to Torchy, �
��I’m takin a chanct on losin my welfare money what feeds my chile, for a man who don’t want to help me none with a dime. I got a chick and a chile.” She didn’t say it, but she thought, “My brains been between my legs. Well, let’s get a whole brainful tonight cause he goin tomorrow.”
And though it hurt her, cause she sure loved her some Torchy, to put him out and keep him out, she did. She told him, “When you get you a place I can come visit you, I’ll give you some more lovin.” He left, thinking of what new woman, or old girlfriend, he could stay with next.
Abby missed Torchy and her life became just a little lonelier. She was getting older and wondered what her life was going to be. Would she be alone? Forever? Wasn’t nobody out there for her?
Then, when she looked in Uniqua’s face and her bright proud eyes, she could take being without Torchy. She told Uniqua, “We gonna get us a good life and a good father one of these days.” She thought to herself, “I hope.”
When Uniqua got to be around thirteen years old, Abby began to worry that Uniqua might bring a baby home, like she had. But, instead, Uniqua came home with a flyer in her hand that promised if you went to school to become a Licensed Vocational Nurse or a RN you would never have to worry bout a job the rest of your life. “I got this off the counter at the library.” She smiled up at her mother.
Abby took the paper, sighed, said, “Baby, Mama ain’t never graduated from high school. Didn’t even get there. And anyway, the welfare won’t let you go to no school. This here is reachin too high, even for you. Specially for me.”
Uniqua, excited, said, “They got something called a GED test for school dropouts to get to be a high school finisher! A diploma! Mama, you can make anybody do anything you want them too! Them welfare people don’t tell you everything to do!”
Abby smiled at her daughter’s pride, but she cried in her lonely, sad bed that night cause she thought she couldn’t do it.
Well, to make a long story short, Uniqua told her teacher what her mother had said, welfare and all. The pretty, brown-skin teacher talked to the lady principal and the principal called the nurse training school and they talked back and forth, back and forth. Finally they came up with if Abby got her GED, she could come “volunteer” time and while she was “volunteering” she would be learning to be an LVN and studying. At the end, if she passed the tests, she could get her license. The teacher was excited too, and came home with Uniqua to tell Abby.
Abby was afraid and didn’t want to hope or dream, or even go to school, except she didn’t mind reading now. Uniqua and Abby studied together, everything the teacher had told them to study. Abby took the test and … passed! With a good grade!
Abby was so proud of that little piece of paper. She hugged, kissed and cried all over her daughter. Her daughter said, “See? You was too good and smart for that ole Torchy man anyway!” They laughed and Abby loved her little tiny knotty kneed butt daughter more than life itself.
Just so you will know, Callie, Abby’s mother, and Abby kept up with each other. Callie was sick and couldn’t work at all now, so she was stretching the welfare check as far as it could go, but she bought Abby a small ring on credit for her graduation present. Callie was proud of her ONLY daughter that was living a clean life and had graduated from high school and had a certificate!
Abby, still afraid she might not be able to do it, in a class with REAL high school grads, started school anyway, pretending to be a part-time volunteer to keep her welfare checks coming. She rode the waves of tension, fear, joy, dread and excitement to the time when it swept over her that she was performing and was not the lowest grade in her class! It took eighteen months, but the day came when she graduated from LVN school. Uniqua graduated from junior high school on her way to high school. They planned on Uniqua going on to college. Abby, feeling her muscle, said, “I might go to college someday myself!” They laughed in the warmth of their love.
Well, Abby looked into quite a few jobs and found private doctors paid more than hospitals. In two years she and Uniqua were able to move out of the ghetto. They were happy, laughing and smiling.
Uniqua said, “They say we aren’t supposed to leave the ghetto and leave all our sisters and brothers here to suffer, Mama.”
Abby sighed. “Well … we ain’t stoppin them from coming with us and gettin out. We don’t have to stay here til they get ready. The smart ones would want us to go and make a way somewhere else for them, maybe.”
They left. Into a better neighborhood. Not the best, you know that. They weren’t doing that good. But better, thought safer, certainly cleaner and more wholesome and healthy. Near a park where it was mostly quiet and they could sit and talk after a hard day’s school and work, while they watched children play. Without guns.
Two more years of sacrificing and struggling, Uniqua had qualified for and applied for her college entry. There is no way to tell of the joy in Abby’s heart. The first one! She was going to miss her baby, Uniqua, but it would all be for the better. Uniqua was going to have a different life. A better life. A decent husband, children and home. Abby was preparing herself to let Uniqua go now that Uniqua’s life was opening up and broadening out. Abby thought, “How can I cry when I lose her? It’s for the better or for her happiness.”
One day around that time, in the early evening, Abby and Uniqua were sitting in that little park. The sun was shining down on the tall trees and smooth grass. Glinting off the play rings, swings and slides the children were playing on as they laughed.
They had noticed the group of unfamiliar boys that hung around the water fountain. Uniqua was becoming annoyed because the big boys were teasing and bothering the little children who came to get water. It was like a little cloud of evil had settled over the playground. You could almost feel something in the air.
A dark blue, low-cut car swung around the corner. Carrying evil and death in the hands of the young boys with the evil empty minds. They stared at the boys around the water fountain, then raised the glinting deadly guns. Four of them. With fingers that had no care or conscience. (They had never heard of God, because the only place they hung out where you might learn something good was around school, sometime, and God wasn’t allowed there.) With these fingers, they smiled a dumb and vicious smile and pulled the shining triggers with the barrels pointed at the boys around the fountain teasing the little children.
Uniqua who usually saw everything around her, knew of drive-by shootings and knew the bad element of those of her age. She saw the sparkle of the gun metal, pointing, and she ran, screaming at the small children near the fountain. Trying to wave them away.
The shots were fired. Ringing out and filling the air with death. The end of hopes. Shattering dreams. Full of pain and loss. Uniqua was still running on her pretty, healthy, slim legs; still waving those long, frantic arms at the children, when she was hit. As she fell she was still reaching for a child when the blood burst through her mouth and nose.
Abby ran to her daughter, Uniqua, regardless of the bullets, which, mercifully, were leaving with the death car. She reached for and pulled her daughter, Uniqua, into her arms. She yelled at the car screeching away. “You fatha fuckers! Look! Look what chu have done! Kill each other, why don’t chu?” She turned back to Uniqua, said, “I’m not cursin them, baby, that was a blessing.”
She pulled Uniqua close to her again, and when Uniqua’s head fell back in total, hopeless death, Abby screamed, “Oh, God, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO!” She took a deep and jagged breath. “Why? Why? Why? Why?” Her last why was buried in her dead daughter’s hanging neck. Her heart begged, too late, that the singing bullets had hit her. But they had already found a mark, and their ultimate end, covered with blood.
It was in the papers and all kinds of people came to the funeral. Almost all of Abby’s family had respected Abby and Uniqua, though some had not liked her because they thought she was uppity because she wasn’t puffin on some pipe or sucking on some bottle, or … well. They dropped their pipes (for a minute), their w
hiskey bottles (they brought them in paper bags) and their lovers to come to the funeral. Callie was there to hold her daughter. Abby did not remember everything about the funeral. She was not really conscious. She sat, she cried, she moaned and she stared off into space. Longing, grieving for her daughter. Her only child. Her beloved child.
When it was all over, Callie was the last to leave and she had to because she wasn’t really well. She had stayed so long, in pain, because she was proud, and loved Abby and Uniqua because they were strivers and she had given birth to one of them, who had given birth to the other.
Abby kept repeating, “I don’t care. I give up. I don’t care no more. Ain’t nothin else. I give up. I just don’t give a damn.”
Time passed. Thank God. Everyone talked to her and finally, they let her alone because life goes on and everyone had to keep up with their own stresses.
Losing a child can be a horrible, terrible thing. Abby had to go to work, so she did. But when she came home, evenings, she began to live in the bottle again. She was near drunk every night. “So I can sleep,” she said.
After a month or two, she began havin them card games again. “So I can hear life talkin,” she said. Sometimes a man would stay over. Seldom the same one. “So I can try to feel life again,” she said. She raised hell most of the time. Was hard to get along with, even with old friends. “I don’t care,” she said. When there was no card game she went out and sat in a bar. “Pain waitin for me when I go home,” she said.
All that love for Uniqua was turning into hate. Hate for everything. She sank that love deep inside her somewhere and it turned bitter and ugly on its way to hate. “I don’t care. Don’t nothin matter,” she said. How she kept that job I don’t know, but the doctor she worked for was tryin to understand. She had been a good and caring worker. Only, now, she would start cryin out of the clear blue sky and have to go home. “I’m just cryin for nothin,” she said, “cause ain’t nothin in me but a big empty hole.” Abby thought a minute, then told him, “No. That ain’t true. There is somethin in my heart. I’m mad and I hate everything. Everything I had is gone.” The doctor was going to have to let her go, but he held on, and she held on, for bout a year.
Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime Page 22