by Janet Walker
Chapter Twenty-Six
THE LIE, REVISITED
Madgelyn Porter stepped out of her polished burgundy Buick LeSabre and onto the sidewalk of Haines Avenue. At a height of five feet, eleven inches, she did not shrink away from her height but held her carriage erectly, and though two hundred forty pounds, she did not lumber when she walked but moved with purpose in fashionable size-twelve pumps and dainty, carefully placed steps. Standing beside the car, she wiggled slightly to undo the pinch of elastic around her thigh—the Playtex girdle, which kept her broad buttocks in check and shaped her large breasts into stiff protrusions. For the brief ride from the MacDonald Park community to Ariel Place Homes, she had dressed inadvertently in the colors of Beck Academy: burgundy Aigner high-heeled pumps, silken taupe pantyhose, tan Liz Claiborne sundress under a burgundy chiffon jacket, and a tan Gucci grip purse. Stylish, well-cut items, but they made her look years older. She was thirty-five.
Madge looked around at the red brick buildings. Since it was a school day and the middle of the morning, the housing project was quiet, something she noticed with contempt and triumph: She was not deceived; she knew peace was the last thing this neighborhood had to offer, and Tracy’s bruised face last night was proof of that. Madge tucked her purse beneath her arm, made sure the door to the new Buick was locked, and proceeded down the paved walkway that led to her sister’s apartment. The bright morning sun worked its way through her thick black hair and warmed her scalp. At the same time, heat radiated up from the sidewalk, sealing her face in a film of moistness and sucking air from her lungs. She thought about the dreaded task before her, reflected on the cold blowing current of the car’s air conditioner, and wished she were back inside.
Up ahead, the walkway forked and led to two doors that shared the same porch. The door on the right belonged to Mr. Jacobs, the patient old man Madge had been forced to call whenever Diane’s phone was disconnected. Once, she had sent Diane three hundred dollars from Korea to have the phone turned on and to buy Tracy clothes for a new school year, but the phone remained disconnected for weeks thereafter, and Madge later learned that Tracy never received clothes from the allotment. The money had been stolen, Diane insisted, by someone she thought was a friend. After that, Madge never mailed Diane money but sent Tracy gifts—a cashmere sweater, a good winter coat, a Luis Vuitton shoulder bag, a Walkman radio. And tucked away in pockets, a folded ten- or twenty-dollar bill.
Madge followed the fork to Diane’s apartment and knocked firmly on the metal screen door. No sounds on the other side, so she knocked again. Glanced at her watch. A little after nine. She sighed. And then the shade trembled in the window of the door. Fingers pulled the shade away from the window and Diane’s early-morning face, pained and squinting, appeared behind the glass. For a few seconds, the two sisters looked at each other. Madge immediately assessed Diane’s red eyes and grim mouth and knew her younger sister was in a venomous mood; Diane had never been a morning person. Diane Sullivan acknowledged her sister with a scowl and Madge, in return, tightened her lips—which, for her, when dealing with people she did not like, was a smile.
The window shade fell back into place and Madge heard the clicking of an opening deadbolt and the small rattle of a chain lock. The door swung inward. Diane withdrew into the living room without inviting Madge inside. Madge hesitated, annoyed by her sister’s rudeness, and crossed the threshold into the apartment. She closed the door and stood nearby. Immediately, she noticed a scent that had come to define, in her mind, Diane’s home—a blend of two odors, actually: the sharp trace scent of burnt leaf and a faintly putrid underlying odor of old garbage. Quickly, Madge scanned the apartment. Grimy pea-colored sofa, battered coffee table, armchair with rips in the tweed fabric. A curio cluttered with knick-knacks. Heavy orange drapes at the front window. In a side window, an air conditioner that was either broken or simply not turned on. In one corner, a fan that delivered a cool current that cut through the tepid air in the room. The kitchen at the back of the apartment featured a greasy beige dinette set, a sink full of dirty dishes, and—the source of the odor, Madge was sure—an overflowing plastic trash bin. She wondered why—no, how—Diane could live this way when they had both grown up with the same mother, Olivia Sullivan, a Southern woman for whom domesticity was a religion.
“Did I wake you?” Madge asked curtly.
Diane, three yards away at the coffee table, where her cigarettes were, dragged her fingers through her hair and twisted her face with annoyance. She picked up the shiny green-and-white pack and beat out a cigarette as she spoke. “The hell you think, Madge? It’s what? Eight o’clock? Shit. And it’s my day off.”
“Nine o’clock,” Madge corrected. “And I’m sorry I woke you but we need to talk about Tracy.”
Diane looked sharply at Madge. The cigarette in her fingers froze. “What about Tracy?”
“What happened to her face?”
“What she tell you happened to her face?”
“She said some girls jumped on her because they wanted your cigarettes.”
The cigarette in Diane’s fingers moved again. “That’s right. So why the hell you askin’ me what happened to her?” Diane’s hand trembled as she stuck the cigarette between her lips.
“Because, Diane, how could something like that happen?”
Diane snatched the unlit cigarette out of her mouth. “I can’t help what happen to Tracy when she git out there in the street!” she said, her arm extended toward the front door.
“That’s right. You can’t. And that’s why I’m here.”
Diane glared at Madge, then drew her eyes away from her sister and jammed the Newport between her lips. She grabbed the lighter from the table, flicked it, and sucked its flame into the end of the cigarette. She drew in a deep mouthful of heat, blew out a cloud of white smoke, and squinted because the haze burned her eyes. At the same time, she became fully aware that Madge had remained standing by the door, and this ignited a new anger in Diane.
“What, you think sump’m gon’ bite you in here?”
Madge looked puzzled.
“You cain’t sit down?” Diane asked tartly.
“I didn’t expect to stay. I just wanted to see what we can do about Tracy and this—situation—with these girls who keep beating on her.”
“The hell you want me to do, Madge? This the muthafuckin’ ghetto: Things gon’ happen to children.”
“And that’s exactly my point, Diane. I wonder how wise it is to make her come home every weekend, all weekend.”
“That ain’t for you to wonder about. You just make sure she here every Friday.”
“And she will be. I’m just saying—” Madge choked, coughed daintily into her fist, and continued. “—when she does come home, watch her, Diane! And I don’t mean out there—I know you can’t help what goes on out there, but you can control what happens in here, and you might want to consider how wise it is to smoke and drink and have all these men running through here when you’ve got a teenaged daughter.”
Diane’s pale cheeks were instantly scarlet. Her green eyes smoldered. “I don’t have ‘all’ no men runnin’ through here! Charles the only one in here! I don’t know where you heard that lie!”
“Even having one man in here who isn’t your husband isn’t a good example, is it, Diane?”
The scarlet now colored Diane’s entire face. “It ain’t none of yo goddamn business what go on in my house, Madge! If I don’t let the welfare come in here tellin’ me what to do, damn if I’ma let you do it! The hell you think you is?”
Madge sighed wearily. “Diane, I didn’t come to argue. I just wanted to talk to you about those three girls, because there’s no telling what they’ll do to Tracy next time.”
“Those girls don’t mess wit’ Tracy all the time. She just got to learn how to stick up for herself and stop being so scared-a everything.”
“How is she not supposed to be afraid of three girls, Diane? That’s ridiculous, and you know it. And a girl sh
ouldn’t have to live in a neighborhood where she has to defend herself every day!”
“And anyway, I watch Tracy!” insisted Diane, responding belatedly to an earlier accusation. “And it’s funny how yo ass, who cain’t even have a child, know all about how I ought to raise mine!”
The remark wounded Madge, silencing her. She had always wanted a baby but could never conceive, and Diane knew this. When Madge spoke again, her voice was subdued. “Diane, that’s not what I’m trying to do. You can be the best mother in the world but it’s still hard to raise a girl in the projects. That’s all I’m saying. And with Tracy getting beat up every week, I just thought we could figure out something to do about it.”
“Tracy don’t git beat up every week!” Diane declared defensively.
“A child’s getting beat up once a year is too much, Diane!” exclaimed Madge impatiently. “Now, I’m not saying MacDonald Park is a paradise, but it’s safer for Tracy there than here, and you know it. All we have to do is look at what happened to her being here just two days. It makes no sense!”
They fell silent. Diane refused to look at her sister across the room; Madge waited for Diane to announce an agreement. But she knew she waited in vain. Diane was ornery and uncooperative—that part of her had not changed. Madge examined her younger sister’s appearance just as she had done six months ago, when she returned home to the States and visited the apartment. Then, as now, she could not believe the deterioration. As children, Diane had possessed odd, clear, green eyes; plump cheeks and rosy lips; brassy red hair that was thick and crimped and reached her shoulder blades even without being hot-combed; and a complexion that always reminded Madge, in memory if not in reality, of the bright yellow surface of Mama’s banana pudding. Physical features that in 1960, when Diane was born, earned Madge’s baby sister immediate prestige in the Sullivan’s Negro household. Madge had resented her family for this display of favoritism, had not quite understood this aspect of her parents’ behavior, and she had disliked Diane for being the recipient of the partiality. Had disliked Diane, too, for her non-physical features: the tantrums Diane threw to get her way with Mother; the smooth way she had of lying, especially if the lie was designed to accuse Madge of some crime Diane had perpetrated; and the miraculous way she metamorphosed into sweetness whenever Daddy came around. As children, Madge was convinced that it was Diane’s physical features, her Caucasian attributes, that allowed her to get away with such antics. Now, these features were vestiges, like charred remnants of a once lovely mansion. Gone was the shiny little girl—for in Madge’s mind as a child, or at least in her memory as an adult, Diane as a girl was shiny, from her slick pomaded hair to the tip of her bathed nose to her black patent-leather shoes. The shining girl was gone now, replaced by a dull, weary, ravaged woman who stood on the other side of the room in a malodorous apartment in the projects, next to an ugly green sofa, a cloud of smoke swirling around her, the index and middle finger of one of her pale hands forming a V that held the burning culprit. The housecoat Diane wore was the color of Pepto Bismol; it had no buttons, trailed loose threads, and displayed the flap of a torn pocket. Underneath the pink coat was a lime pajama top the fabric of which, in some places, was sheer. Diane’s hair was brown and dull and brittle. Her lips were still full and pliant, but far from rosy; instead, they were gray from smoke and nicotine. Her cheeks were drawn stretches of dry skin, her complexion ashen and blemished. But Diane had retained the shapely little figure she was developing when Madge left the United States seventeen years before. The petite, sturdy, strong frame, small in the waist and shoulders, with nearly non-existent breasts, a high little shapely behind, and plump, well-formed calves—enviable legs, as if her ancestry had included East Asian, and not white American, blood. She still had that, at least.
Softened by remembrance and pity, Madge’s words were tactful, her manner gentle. “I’m not saying you’re not a good mother, Diane. I know you love Tracy. And I know you want what’s best for her. And since…well, since things are a little easier for me, with Ed, and my not having to work full time, I thought maybe she could…I could—”
“Lemme tell you sump’m, Madge,” interrupted Diane impatiently. “The only reason Tracy wit’ you is ’cause I got sick and tired of hearin’ her whine ’bout it every day. I ain’t do it for you! ’Cause far as I’m concerned, the best place for a chile is wit’ her mama. And as much as you like to think you Tracy mama, I’m Tracy mama and I know what’s best for her. And I say she gon’ be here every weekend, or else she’ll be here all the time!”
“No matter how dangerous it is.”
“That’s right!”
“Well,” agreed Madge with sarcasm, “you may be her mother.”
“Oh, I’m glad you reco’nize that!” began Diane victoriously, and then she caught her sister’s hint and became insulted. “And yeah, I’m her mother and yeah, I do know what’s best for her! Even though you never thought I did!”
“That’s not true—”
“Yeah, the hell it is! That’s why you always tried to take her from me!”
“Diane. I did want Tracy, yes. But I wasn’t trying to take her from you. You were young. Fourteen! Too young for that responsibility. I thought I was doing you a favor.”
“Favor? How the hell tryna take my chile doin’ me a favor? You fulla shit, Madge.”
“Can we talk without arguing, Diane?”
“I ain’t arguin’!”
“I just came to see if we could do something about what happened Sunday. Now, Tracy told me one of the girls is named Virginia Daggett. Do you know her?”
Diane refused to answer.
“I think we ought to press charges against her and the other two girls.”
“First of all, this ain’t no McDon’l Park, this Area Place. You don’t take out no warrant on nobody ’less you want them to take out a bullet on yo ass next time they see you.”
“Is that why Tracy didn’t want to call the police?”
“Second, this Tracy and my business. Let us handle it how we want to.”
“And so what does that mean, Diane? You’re not going to do anything about what happened?”
Diane sucked on the cigarette, blew out smoke, and looked at Madge in silence.
“You’re just going to let those girls get away with what they did to Trace—” Madge choked, gasped, coughed twice, and felt a stab of hatred for Diane’s smoking.
Diane took another drag and opened her mouth to release a ring of smoke. She succeeded in producing only a small white puff.
“You do that, Diane, and they’re just going to be encouraged to do more. The next time, they may put Tracy in the hospital. And let’s hope that’s the worst they do!”
“I already told you what’ll happen if you do sump’m, Madge. So just keep yo ass outta this and let Tracy and me handle it.”
“Until when, Diane? Until the girls have killed Tracy?”
“They ain’t gon’ kill Tracy.”
“They could! Children are crazy these days! Especially here! I’ve got a good mind to just call the police anyway.”
Something changed, and Madge sensed it immediately, although in the first milliseconds she mistakenly thought the change had occurred in the air between them. But then she realized the change had taken place inside the other woman in the room. A sudden change in mood and expression, too quick to be called a metamorphosis. Rather, it was a personality shift so abrupt as to be violent. A snapping. And evidence of it screamed behind the green eyes, screamed silently and blindly, and the pale face flushed pink and the strong little body flinched forward, then whirled away as if Diane suddenly remembered where she was, who she was, who she was about to confront.
Madge gasped and then felt a faint and familiar sensation that quickly grew in intensity—the feel of hundreds of pin pricks against her skin, and then a squeezing inside her chest, and then the awful breathlessness that had been her enemy, her frightful nemesis, for as long as she could remember being. And
now it was here, suddenly, stirred first by the combustion of tobacco and then fully aroused by fear, a fear caused by the aborted burst of violence on the other side of the room. Hee-huh Hee-hunh heeee-hunh. The noise of her own ragged breathing sounded, in Madge’s ears, the way it always did. Like an alarm. Like frailty. Like death. And so her fingers flew to the metal latch of her purse, undid it, dug inside, and wrapped around the hard plastic shell, the aluminum cylinder that produced the mist that had saved her life more times than she could remember.
Hee-huh Heeee-hunh.
On the other side of the room, Diane watched in silence.
Heeee— Madge inserted the tiny round opening of the plastic shell into her mouth—pressed the pump trigger of the tiny can—felt the aerosol hit the back of her throat. The pricks of moisture. The odd taste. Salvation. For a moment the tightness around her chest remained and, as often occurred during the moments when she waited for the mist to take effect, panic flitted about in her stomach and gave her an unpleasant tickle of terror. But then—there it was, thank Jehovah—something slipped from around her lungs and her skin stopped pricking. Her breathing returned to normal and she bent forward, slightly, coughing, panting, her eyes watering. She blinked, dug into her purse for the handkerchief she always kept there, looked across the room at her sister.
Diane had watched the respiratory attack without moving away from the spot where she stood. Now that the episode was over, she lifted the burning cigarette to her lips, spewed a stream of smoke into the air out of the corner of her mouth, and asked, “You ah’ight?”
Madge did not answer. Instead, she looked at Diane the way she had done many times when they were children: with the compassion of one beholding, but unable to comprehend, unmitigated selfishness. For a moment, that is how they stood—Diane, defiant and smoking; Madge, troubled and fascinated. And then finally Madge sighed, slipped the aerosol can into her purse, tucked the leather purse beneath her arm, and turned to leave. Behind her, Diane’s voice gouged out a warning.
“Just remember what I said.”
Madge hesitated, looked back at the voice but not at the face that produced it.
“Keep yo ass out our business. ’Cause every time you try to handle sump’m you end up fuckin’ things up—you know how you is…”
Madge did not wait for the rest of the voice but went out the apartment door.