The Revisioners

by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

  “For now, but you’re going to leave. Like today, I looked and looked, and you were nowhere to be found.”

  “We’re not leaving, Grandma.” I say. “We’re staying right here.”

  She pauses. “So everything’s going to be okay?” she asks, and she sounds like a little girl in a way that makes me want to both reassure her and pull her upright, remind her of her true age.

  I’m too uncomfortable not to say something back. “Better than okay,” I say.

  “You sure, Ava?” She winces all of a sudden.

  “Did I hurt you?” I ask. I realize that despite how little she sounds, how powerless, I’m afraid.

  “No, the opposite, you got it.” She wobbles her head back and forth. “Perfect,” she says.

  LATER, KING EATS HIS DINNER FAST, THEN ASKS TO BE excused. I can hear him from the kitchen talking to the girls on three-way. I take my time clearing the table, then making my old favorite, measuring the Cocchi Americano, the sweet vermouth, even carving out the curl of the lemon peel. I am procrastinating checking on Grandma Martha. She has her nurse who comes by to monitor her bath most nights, but I have been the one to tuck her in since I moved in. Only tonight after her episode—which is still pressing on me—I’m not sure what I’ll find.

  When I arrive upstairs, I am relieved to see she’s still sleeping away. I head back down to my own room and start to unpack. My great-great-great-grandmother’s picture has been in a box since my first week here, and I stare at it for a while. Every time I see it, I notice a new thing; this time it’s the fear in her eyes. She wasn’t only lonely, she was afraid, of being by herself in a world that she had only started to manage with her husband beside her. I hear a series of creaks above me, footsteps. Grandma was sleeping but she must have woken up. The nurse is up there if she needs anything. I wash my face and take my earrings off, lay them down on the dresser, and sit on the edge of my bed. I am about to lie down when I hear glass breaking, as sharp as if it’s my own bedroom mirror that has been busted. I race downstairs and check all the windows but they’re secure. I open the front door, and a black boy not much older than King is squatted in the next-door neighbors’ driveway, reaching inside their new Lexus SUV. He looks up at me and we lock eyes before he dashes away. The neighbors are out now. They want answers, and they look at me with disdain, like I was the one who caused the scene. After they examine the car, they call the police. It doesn’t take long for the officers to arrive and draft a report. One of them asks me if I caught a face, a vague description. I shake my head. “Nothing,” I say, and I turn back inside.

  THE NEXT DAY I DRIVE KING BACK TO THE OLD NEIGHBORHOOD to see his friend. Central City has struggled, and you see it in the empty lots and boarded-up windows, but new restaurants and shops are popping up on O. C. Haley, and of course there are the neighborhood’s anchors: Ashé Cultural Arts Center where King and I would go for open mics and drum workshops; Café Reconcile where I’d treat myself on Mondays to red beans and bananas Foster bread pudding. As ready as I was to leave this place, in a way it’s a relief to be back, to see the older women sitting on the porches of bright shotguns snapping green beans, the young men kneeling over their front lawns, resuscitating old cars. We reach the apartments and I almost want to pull into my own spot. Crossing the lawn for Senait’s front door, we have to bypass flat bags of Lay’s potato chips and empty cans of Coke. I know it wasn’t Senait. I remember having to wake up every morning and sort through the trash some roamer had left on my stoop the night before.

  When we get inside it’s just like old times. King grabs red soda and Cheetos from Senait’s kitchen and carries them into the back with the kids to watch YouTube videos. I sit at the table while my friend cuts chicken tenders for dinner. She passes me salt and vinegar potato chips and a jar of sliced pickles, and for some reason, telling her I’m not supposed to be eating that stuff makes me feel better about tearing open the bag, sliding my fingers into the juice. As she slices around the chicken fat, she catches me up.

  “Sandra’s son’s girlfriend had the baby, a lil’ girl, and they named her Aubrey. She look just like her daddy.”

  “And Destiny’s daddy got out the other week. They had a lil’ party for him but I had to work.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t take off, with his fine ass.”

  “Girl, you know I tried, but I’m already only four days on, three days off. He ain’t worth losing my whole job.” She furrows her brow, like she’s considering what she just said. “At least I don’t think he is.”

  We laugh.

  “I miss you,” I say.

  “Please, you got the maid and the butler and the cook.”

  “I’m not gon’ lie, Binh can show you how to fry some chicken. He can show your mama too. I brought you some of his yaka mein.” I pat the Tupperware in my tote.

  I pause. “I don’t know though. My grandmother, she’s family and all that, but it’s weird, living in somebody else’s house. And King’s the only black kid in his class. I don’t want him to become all golly gee.”

  “Not golly gee. What the hell is golly gee?”

  “You remember Carlton from The Fresh Prince?”

  I stand up and start snapping my fingers, switching my hips, and she laughs.

  “Seriously though, it might affect his self-esteem,” I say, sitting down.

  “Self-esteem? I know you doing fine if you talking about self-esteem.”

  “You saw the news?” she asks.

  I nod. Two boys King’s age had been shot around the corner a few nights ago. One of them had died and the other one was hanging on at Ochsner Hospital.

  “He’s going to live,” she goes on, “but that’s the worst part. They got him in the brain. He won’t be able to dress himself again. At least they didn’t kill him.” She shakes her head.

  “You know I don’t like to be negative. I’m only bringing that up so you remember, you lucky you got King out of here,” she says.

  I know that. “I’m grateful,” I say. I almost don’t say the next part. It seems extravagant, but I’m not as comfortable as I hoped I’d be, as I was that first night.

  I pause again, then go on. “And then he hangs out with these white girls,” I say.

  She looks up at that. “Not white girls.”

  “Yeah, white girls. Claire and Harper.”

  “Hmph.” She is dipping the chicken in egg yolks, then flour. When the pieces hit the pan the grease pops and sizzles. “You might want to watch that,” she says.

  “I know,” I say. “That’s why I brought it up. I am.”

  “Ain’t too long before they’re acting like he’s coming on to them or something.”

  I shake my head. “Then again, the mothers are really nice. They came up and introduced themselves the other day. They were singing and—”

  “Yeah, they’re nice today,” she cuts me off, “singing off-key and shit, but you better believe they’re watching, and if he even hugs those lil’ girls too hard.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “Ain’t no maybe about it.”

  I can see the chicken skin browning.

  “You just be careful, girl. You don’t want to be going from one kind of danger to another.”

  King walks into the kitchen and sits at the table beside me, takes out his phone.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be playing with Nathan?” I ask.

  “They don’t say playing, Mom,” he says, but he doesn’t budge either. For the rest of the time I’m there, he’s right next to me, and he only nods at his friend when it’s time to leave.

  ON THE WAY BACK, I PROD HIM FOR ANSWERS—HE HAD been the one begging me to go to Senait’s—but he just offers up that middle school silence, so I let it go.

  My mother calls when I get home. She’s in a good mood, says she had a doctor’s appointment in the area, and wants to stop by and see the new place.

  “Of course,” I say. Ordinarily, I’d be hesitant, but lately it’s just been
me and Grandma and I could use somebody else, even if it is my mother. I sit with Grandma until her nap, then I straighten up the pillows on the sofa, dust the shelves, vacuum the rugs though there is nothing on them. Still I am embarrassed at what my mother will see, the pictures of old white people on every wall. They are stern and unrelenting in their eyes, and I wonder for the first time how they’d feel about me eating off their china. I remember my great-great-great-grandmother upstairs and hurry for the frame. It is hard to know where to place her, but I choose an end table in the corner. You’d only see her there if you were looking, but once you found her, you wouldn’t misplace her again.

  My mother is smiling when I open the door. I lead her in and she walks from one end of the living room to the other. She’s been here before and she doesn’t seem as awed as King was. She finds Josephine’s picture immediately and moves her hand out to touch it then pulls it back like something might bite her.

  King comes bounding down the stairs.

  “There’s my boy,” she says. She hugs him, then she reaches into her pocketbook for a tin can. Pralines. “I just made them,” she sings. “I think they’ve cooled.”

  We sit down on the sofa, then he fishes for the biggest piece, takes a bite.

  “Yooo.” He closes his eyes. “Yooo, Maw Maw, this is out of this world. This is better than the praline man that sells them for a dollar outside my old school. You could sell these, you know.”

  She nods. “I know. None of that devil dairy in there either,” she says.

  “You don’t miss it neither,” King says, reaching for another one.

  She fidgets in her seat, still looking around. “So what, is it a holiday I didn’t know about?”

  “Parent–teacher appreciation,” I say back.

  “Um-hmm, seem like the better the school is, the less time they actually have you in there.”

  King and I laugh.

  “You liking it though, King?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You don’t just have to say that ’cause your mama’s here now.” She’s smiling though. “You know you tell Maw Maw the truth. You miss your old friends?”

  “We just got back from Senait’s,” I say.

  “I know you were glad to see Nathan,” my mother says.

  King shrugs. “He didn’t have that much to say to me,” he says.

  King’s about to say something more when I hear the slow drag of Grandma approaching. I turn.

  “Grandma,” I say, “I didn’t hear you get up.”

  “You don’t eat in this part of the house,” she snaps. Her voice is shrill and hard. King covers the top of the tin.

  She looks around in a panic. I can tell she’s having trouble orienting herself. Then her attention fixes on something and I look over to see that it’s the picture in the corner that I just propped up, the one of Josephine.

  “Grandma,” I say, “you remember my mother. She just wanted to come by and see where we’ve been staying.”

  My mother stands up to greet her.

  Grandma seems like she’s still out of it but she zeroes in on my mother’s face and comes to.

  “Oh, you must have found the secret of youth, Gladys,” she says after only a little while.

  My mother smiles but it is not her normal smile. “Likewise,” she says.

  “Oh, you don’t have to lie,” Grandma says. “What’s your secret?” She leans in. “Really, tell me,” she whispers.

  “Water and coconut oil and minding my own goddamn business,” my mother says. She is still smiling that half smile. I’ve seen it before, when she’d talk with white teachers at my school who said I was doing my best though I’d only earned a C in the class. Or at the grocery store when a cashier gave attention to someone behind her first. It was the smile she wore when she was about to pounce.

  “Well, she tries to mind her own business,” I say, and I feel the tension settle. Even my mother laughs.

  “Go get her some tea.” Grandma Martha nods in my direction and I get up and boil some water. When I’m back in the room, Grandma and Mama are sitting next to each other on the sofa. King has gone upstairs, and the women are talking like contemporaries. My mother seems more comfortable when I hand her her cup, sharing that her life changed when she decided to become a doula. She wakes up, she says, thinking about her girls. She goes to sleep thinking about them. They give her purpose.

  “Oh, yes,” Grandma says. “I know all about that. When Ava’s daddy went off to school I started tutoring the neighborhood kids. Just a few blocks away but life couldn’t be more different. Some of them didn’t even know what sounds their letters made, or their numbers one through ten. Can you imagine? Five years old, but I’d get a slate and a piece of chalk the same way my mother taught me, and after a few months, they’d be reading Laura Ingalls Wilder.”

  “Well, bless your heart,” my mother says.

  “That’s right,” Grandma sings.

  Binh comes out and says dinner is ready and Grandma tells him to prepare an extra plate. My mother looks at me, and I nod and call upstairs for King, and we all walk over to the table. It has been set like always with a fall floral arrangement of orange and gold in the center. The place mats are crisp and the silverware is gathered and clasped in cloth. I look over at my mother with concern—I don’t remember her ever eating with my grandmother—but she doesn’t seem out of place.

  Grandma Martha talks through dinner, circling around the same old stories.

  “When I was a little girl, nothing but a snatch of a thing, the boys would ride over and they’d rattle their tails around our porch. Daddy called us the Dufrene girls, and everybody wanted a piece of us, I tell you. From the time we were thirteen they wanted to see what was under our petticoats, and the funny thing was sometimes we showed them.”

  King is used to it and just sops up his corn chowder with his sourdough roll. I glance at my mother throughout the monologue and I notice she doesn’t eat the food, just spreads it around her bowl. At first she is quick with the polite um-hmms and the Is that sos, but after a while even the superficial conversation subsides. The more Grandma talks, the more tired my mother seems, and by the end, I have to help her out of her seat.

  We return to the parlor after dinner. King joins us, and we are about to walk my mother out when King’s phone rings. It’s a FaceTime call, and Harper’s face flashes across the screen for a minute, then he hangs up. Before we can stand, Grandma pipes up.

  “King, who’s that you were sitting next to?”

  I look over at my son. He is alone on the sofa. I look at my mother.

  “That little blond cherub, young, but what a beauty,” Grandma goes on. “You sure you supposed to be talking to her this time of night?” she asks, her voice upturned.

  “It’s not that late, Grandma,” I say.

  “Yeah, but what would her father say?” she asks. “A big boy like you talking to that little old thing. You have to ask yourself how it appears—”

  “Grandma,” I stop her. “That’s enough,” I say. I pause. “You must be tired.”

  I walk over. Juanita is already running her bath when we reach her room, and I explain that Grandma had a long day.

  I am embarrassed at what she said, and the whole way back downstairs, I’m preparing my excuses, but my mother is already at the door. She seems unsteady on the walk to her car and I offer to drive her home, but she refuses. She doesn’t mention Grandma’s outburst.

  “Call me when you get back,” I make her promise, and she kisses me on the cheek.

  I go back inside and I hear Grandma whistling from the kitchen: “Amazing Grace.” I don’t know how she made it back down so fast. Not only that, but she is standing, shifting dishes from the counter to the sink quicker than I’ve seen her move since I arrived. I try to stop her but she puts her hand up in my face.

  “No, no,” she says. “Let me; it’s rare, but nothing feels better than getting back to my old self. I think I need to see my friends mor
e. Spending time with your mother really brought me back to life. I used to host parties, played bridge every other Sunday. I’d prepare a big spread, chicken salad and croissants, petit fours, you name it.”

  She is humming now too, and when the dishes are cleared, she is on to the countertops, wiping them with bleach until they shine. She wants to walk upstairs by herself and I let her. Still, I double-check to make sure she hasn’t turned on the burners by mistake and that all the food is put away. But no, everything is secure. My mother texts me. She is home. She was tired from giving blood earlier is all.

  I walk back to the living room and try to see the place the way she would have seen it. No doubt it is impressive, but it is not mine. And then Grandma Martha’s comments toward King. If anybody else had said them, I would have cursed her out, point-blank. It’s Grandma though, and of course she didn’t mean anything by it. That’s what I would have told my mother if she had stuck around. I wonder if she had even taken in the photograph. I walk toward the corner for it, and it’s not where I left it. I look around the whole living room, ask King but he says he hasn’t seen it either. I start to bother Grandma Martha, but something tells me to check my own room first. There it is, on my bed. I know I didn’t, but I must have moved it and forgotten.

  Josephine

  1924

  MOST BOYS JERICHO’S AGE STILL WORK THE FIELDS; THEY go to school in the fall after the cotton is picked, but come spring, planting season, they are out again. Their parents have as many children as they can, call them hands because each one signifies a set of two, but I see to it that Jericho attends school year-round. His father grunts, tickled all the while that the boy can read the book of Psalms by himself.

  When Jericho is off, and I’ve had my morning grits and bacon, I set to my own work. It has been many years since I midwifed regularly, or nursed a white woman’s baby, but I still wash the clothes, haul the water, tend the fire, change the linen, dust, cook, preserve. I tried to eat lunch with the workers at first, but I feel useless sitting, knowing they will toss a sandwich back in one hand and spray the aphids off the orchard leaves with the other. There is a table I set up when I moved here to bring my mother back, an altar that I covered in her favorite blue cloth, the sage she burned, and stones she carried. But I hung my head over it, I prayed and prayed, I chanted and I sang, and she never returned.