She smiled at him, but she was angry when we got outside.
“What were you doing when your eyes were closed like that?” she asked as we walked. The sun hadn’t come up yet, and it was cold, colder than I’d known it could get in the open night air. The hair on my arms stood straight up like grass.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Don’t lie to me, Josephine. I know it wasn’t nothing. What were you doing?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble,” I said. My lower lip was trembling.
“You’re going to cause trouble if you don’t tell me. I need to know what you were doing in there.”
She stopped just before we reached the cabins and knelt before me.
“I just saw the blood stop flowing,” I said. I was crying. “I saw whatever was leaking closing up, I saw her holding a baby, rocking it. It’s a boy.”
“It is a boy.” She said it like it was bad that it was a boy though, bad that the baby existed all around, and she gripped my hands and kept walking.
“How long have you been able to do that?”
“Not long.”
“Have you ever done it before?”
I shook my head, deciding not to tell her about the coin. “Is it bad, Mama?” I asked. “If it’s bad, I won’t do it again.”
She shook her head, patting the soiled apron on her dress with her hands. “It’s not bad, it’s good, it’s the only good thing in this world, our power to step outside it. But I don’t want you doing it again, not like that, not for them.”
“Why not, Mama? If it’s the only good thing?”
“It’s the only good thing when we do it, for ourselves and for each other. But they take, they take, and they take, and pretty soon it’s not yours anymore. It’s not pure, and with the purity goes the power. Like me today, I was trying to make the bleeding stop too, you know.” She lowered her voice then. “But it wouldn’t take. I saw her in the chair, rocking and rocking. But it wouldn’t take.”
“I’m sorry, Mama,” I said. “Why did it work for me? Did I take it from you?”
“No, baby girl, don’t ever think that. They took it from me. They took it from me. And if they realize it’s gone, they’re going to toss me out with it. But I’m gonna get it back, I’m gonna take it with me, and I’m gonna get it back.”
Then she looked away. I turned to where her line of vision led me. It was Jupiter, coming in from the swamps, mud streaming down his pant legs to his bare feet. His bird was just as covered, but it was in the air now, near Jupiter’s shoulder, and when it flapped its wings, mud dropped onto the tip of Jupiter’s ear.
“Where you coming from like that?” Mama asked.
“You didn’t see me. I was right there with you.”
Mama squinted at him.
“No?” he asks in disbelief. “No matter, I was there. A shame that bleeding stopped, don’t you think?”
Mama gasped, stepped backward. “Don’t you wish no harm on that baby. I won’t lower myself to the point where I’d allow it.”
“I didn’t wish no harm on that baby. Why its heart’s still beating. One of the reasons.” He looked at me then.
Mama grabbed my wrist and turned off to the side toward the cabin.
He didn’t follow her. When we got to the front door, she turned back. He was still talking like we’d never left.
“She should have been happy when I told her where those earrings were,” he started. “But she don’t know the difference between weakness and strength; she scared off by power, even power that could ease her mind.” He smiled again, looked at us like he was coming out of a daze. “Nah, the baby’s okay,” he went on. “For now. The thing about those diamonds,” he said, “is they not even real.” Then he stretched out his mouth toward the stars and started to laugh, a jittery explosion of a sound. The pigeon didn’t move though, just fluttered there watching.
Ava
2017
AFTER A FEW DAYS IN THE HOSPITAL, MY MOTHER IS much improved, sitting up and eating; she’s no longer a fall risk and she’s been back and forth to the bathroom on her own.
She doesn’t mention the house or Grandma and I’m relieved.
By lunchtime she says she feels cooped up, so I order a wheelchair and steer her around the pavilion downstairs. We pass the Peet’s, the gift shop, the Get Well balloons and the inspirational paperbacks in the windows. I’d draped her in a backward gown to cover her ass and she hasn’t washed her face or brushed her teeth in days. Still she looks like my mama, skin glowing, eyes bright. I’d brought a scarf from home to wrap her dredlocks away from her face. As I roll her outside, she drags her fingertips through every flowerbed and blade of grass, and it’s like having a baby: in her presence, I see the world with new eyes too.
After a while we just sit. I fill her in on the meeting with the girls yesterday and she nods and smiles.
“That Hazel,” she says. “I worry about her. Trinity is fine, she has her family; her mother had thirteen brothers and sisters, and they already have a schedule set up: one of them will be in the house every day. But Hazel, she has so much riding on that man, and I can already tell he’s not going to come through.” She pauses. “If I tell you something, will you believe me?” she asks.
“Sure, Mama,” I say.
She shakes her head. “Never mind,” she says.
I talk some more about the girls, that Brittany seems like she’ll deliver first but that Thandie was more impatient for it.
“My grandmother’s grandmother talks to me in here,” she cuts in finally. “Josephine. She still looks just like that picture I gave you.”
“Oh?” I turn to her but I am not surprised. She talks like this from time to time.
She nods. “So clear it’s like she’s really there. She’s telling me things too. Stories she never told my grandmother when she was alive. My grandmother would beg her, but she wouldn’t say a word.” She pauses again. “People are so afraid of hauntings but I pray for them. Lord, clear me out so I can be one with all that have lived through me. There are the sweet hauntings, the tender ones you yearn for. Just one minute with the great beyond, I beg of him, and now he’s starting to respond.” She looks older as she’s saying this, more unhinged than inspired, and I find myself leaning back, away from her.
“You feeling okay, Mama? You seem tired.” I stand to wheel her back to her room, but she shushes me.
“She made her own jam,” she says. “People would come to her from miles around to sample it. They’d spread it on biscuits but they’d spread it on rice and gravy too, it was that good. Any base would do as long as it would allow the taste of the juice, but it wasn’t runny either, more like a pudding than anything, the fruit clumped in perfect little knots. She ran her own farm, even after her husband died. She had people to work for her, but up until she was too old to do it, she would be the one to milk the cows first thing in the morning; she let the renters draw on her butter. She never forgot how to do that work, she never forgot who she was doing it for, even though it was her farm, even though she could read and write.” My mother whispers the next part: “She talked to spirits, you know. She was a woman who could fix things. She—”
“But it’s over,” I add. My mother has always seen through the veil between worlds, always revealed her view, but I’m uncomfortable now. I can’t put my finger on why.
She quiets, looks up at me like she’s realizing something.
“It’s over now,” I repeat.
“Maybe,” she says. “Maybe.”
THAT NIGHT, MY MOTHER’S HEMOGLOBIN LEVELS GO UP. The nurse calls me at 3 a.m. because she’s pointing at people in her room who aren’t there, shouting at them to leave her be, but the doctor chalks it up to too much ammonia in her blood, gives her a laxative, and all is well.
Grandma Martha is still on a high from my mother’s visit and she’s managed to organize a meeting with her book group. This month’s choice is a fictionalized account of the first black girl
s’ experiences integrating New Orleans schools. I’ve never read it myself, but saw from the jacket that it’s written by a white woman. Grandma Martha had me suggest a casual meal to Binh to guide the conversation. He’s chosen chili and cornbread, and I can smell the green peppers and onions, the tomato gravy and the beef.
“You ready for this?” I ask Grandma, as I help her pick out a simple button-down and pants. She’s been doing well. Most likely she’d be able to select something reasonable herself, but you never know. “It’s a long two hours, and you know how some of those women can talk,” I add.
She laughs at that. “Especially Marilynn,” she says. “She never says anything important, just drones on and on. Doesn’t she think other people might have an opinion? She doesn’t care. And then Rose won’t even have read the book,” she goes on. “I swear she’s just here for the crudités.”
“I’d be too, I don’t blame her, that and the pigs in a blanket.”
The women gather slowly over the hour and mingle in the parlor until everyone has arrived. Marilynn and Rose, who have drivers; Anne, who has worked at an antique shop since her husband died in debt; and Patsy, who sells jewelry for fun, fake diamonds and gold that she would never wear but she’s so successful at it she’s started to earn more than her husband. They’re dressed just like Grandma used to, in gingham shirts and ankle-length pants and fresh pedicures peeking out of their braided slides. They wear fleur-de-lis necklaces, carry monogrammed purses, push their designer glasses up on their noses, and they drink more Chardonnay than they eat. More than anything, they are all so happy to see me. It seems to elevate them as much as the alcohol does that I’m there.
Patsy says, “You’re a good girl, taking care of your grandmother when she needs you.”
And Anne says, “That’s right. Blood is thicker than water.”
When it’s time to move I help Grandma to her seat. I take her hand and can feel it shaking.
“It’s okay,” I tell her so no one can hear, and she squeezes it back.
She sits and flips through the pages of the hardcover. As the host, she’s supposed to speak first, and I don’t know how much her friends know about her decline, or if her decline will even be relevant today. She doesn’t speak for a while, just flipping the pages. I am sitting on the sofa scrolling Facebook, mostly peering out over the phone to see if I am needed. I start to stand just as Patsy exclaims that the part she loved most was the scene where the white teacher punishes the kids in the class who have pushed the little black girl into the mud.
“The way she held that child after,” she says. “The way she continued to teach her alone. That’s what we need. That’s what we’re missing.”
Another lady agrees, but she wonders where the other supporters were. She saw the angry women who stood in lines outside the school each morning, yelling and carrying on, and it made her sick, but where were the ladies who were on the right side of history? Surely they were there, just like they’re here now. The author should have paid more attention to that side.
Several times Grandma starts conversations that end up meandering. I notice her overuse of the phrase in other words, but she has trouble finding the other words even. Each time I see her struggle, I hurry over to her with some unnecessary errand to distract attention from her flailing. I replace her napkin or add more fruit to her side dish, switch out her silverware. When she starts talking about the Dufrene girls again, how coveted they were, and how precious, I head over with a pitcher of water. I start to fill her glass, and she moves it from my aim just as the water begins to flow.
“Goddamnit,” she shouts as it hits her lap. “Can’t you do anything right?”
She stands and more liquid spills to the hardwood.
“Calm down, Martha.” Patsy reaches for napkins.
“She’s supposed to be good help, but she’s causing more trouble than anything,” Grandma goes on. I step back. Patsy pats Grandma’s pants down. Anne stands up behind me and rubs my back, but I move away from her until I’ve separated from all of them and am on the bottom stair. I stand on it for a while clutching the railing, watching them fuss over Grandma. I have a tough feeling in my chest like meat stuck between my teeth and I’m waiting on one of them to say something that will retrieve it. But they don’t and eventually I turn and walk away.
Upstairs, I sit on the edge of my bed and listen to the rest of the meeting. Grandma has gotten her steam back now. She’s talking about how well the girls who integrated ended up doing: “Their success has to count for something.” She’s pointing out how much has changed. “Look at King,” I hear her say, “nobody gives him any trouble.” I think about what my mama has said, that there are versions of ourselves, there are versions of ourselves even within ourselves. In another house, in another moment, I might go down there and spout off what I learned in an African American studies class at Xavier my fifth year. I might whisper to them that I have a suspicion some of them would be on the sidelines barking at those little girls on their way to school. I might put Grandma to shame, but as it is, I stay where I’m seated. I take out my phone to call my mother, I even dial the digits, but I don’t want to burden her. I don’t want to hear I told you so.
MY MOTHER’S SISTERS AND I DECIDE TO THROW A welcome-home party for my mother, and I am glad to get the break from Martha. It has been a few days since her outburst, and though she apologized, it still weighs on me. I counted the money last night, and I am only $7,000 short of my goal. Two months will fly by, I tell myself. I even go online today to look at townhomes.
About fifty people cram in my mother’s house, some hanging over the kitchen counter scooping dip onto lime Tostitos, some sipping white wine on lounge chairs outside. I busy myself with the food: I miss cooking, stewing pork in a Crock-Pot, sprinkling garlic and slathering honey on a whole red fish, patting butter inside flour pockets for homemade biscuits, and everybody knows it doesn’t make sense to cook jambalaya from scratch when Zatarain’s hits for $1.59 a box. My mother washes tomatoes and cucumbers from her garden for a salad. We line the serving dishes out on her counter, and when it’s time to eat, the room goes silent, except for the occasional grunt, like an extension of the grace my mother said before the meal. Everybody, I mean every single one of my relatives, gets up for a second serving.
I sit between my mother’s sisters, and they tell me how proud they are of me, that they’ve heard King is in a better school, that we’re looking at houses. It doesn’t all feel true but I soak in the praise anyway.
Once we’ve eaten, we clear the tables and chairs from the center of the living room and turn on the music. Somebody suggests a dance competition, and mostly my cousins are doing the Beanie Weanie and the Jubilee, but some of their kids cut in with the Nae Nae and the Wobble.
I hear cheering break through every now and then and calls for my drunk Aunt Betty to sit down.
There is watermelon punch some of the uncles have snuck brown liquor into and babies are running from arm to arm. At some point in the night, my aunt slides a chocolate Bundt cake out of the oven, and we sing Stevie Wonder’s version of “Happy Birthday” to my cousin who turned twenty-five two weeks earlier. There’s only one candle in the cake, and we can’t even find a lighter until my uncle who always smells like trees whips a BIC out of his pocket.
As we’re slicing the cake, I notice King isn’t there. I walk through the house, then outside the screen door, and see him sitting on the swing on the patio. It’s been dark but my mother has old-school lanterns set up along the carport and they light up his face enough for me to see he’s disappointed I’ve interrupted his flow. He has that phone out and he’s FaceTiming with Harper again. Snippets of their conversation pop through, the parts I can understand:
“You don’t know Eric? I have to introduce you. He’s sooo cool.” This from the girl.
“Nah, I don’t know Eric. Does he know me?” This from my son.
I shake my head and sit next to him, half my face in the screen, all aw
kward, until he tells her he has to go.
Once he’s hung up, I play-slap him.
“Boy, we’re at a party. You just saw that girl. She can wait.”
“I know, Mama.”
“You know, huh?”
He’s cheesing. It worries me, this relationship, but I’ve had a few drinks, and he seems so happy. I sigh. “You like her, huh?” I ask.
He nods. “She all right.”
“All right? You can’t even hang with your family? How often do you see Chase and Leah? They in there asking about you, and you out here on the phone with her.”
“She’s nice, Mama,” he says.
“She must be real nice.”
“I didn’t want to move, you know,” he cuts me off with a burst of energy that was not of the original conversation.
“I know,” I say, and I feel my guilt rising because we’re going to have to start all over again soon.
“Nah, it’s cool. I don’t mean it like that,” he seems to sense my sadness. “I’m just saying she made it easy on me. She introduced me to everybody. She thinks I’m the funniest kid she ever met, she tells me that.” He pauses. “I told her about Daddy, and she said it was his loss, not coming around.”
“I told you that too,” I say.
“Yeah, but I believe it when she says it,” he says. “Now I’m glad we’re here.” He pauses. “If we hadn’t come, I never would have met her.”
We stay out there on the swing for some time. Christmas is around the corner, light jacket weather, but I left mine inside. Still, I have my hand on his thigh and I don’t say a word.
The Revisioners Page 13