IN THE SOUTH, we eat liver mush. We slice thin grainy rectangles, the thinner the better, into the laps of skillets. The meat sizzles on the grease, becomes lacy as the oil pops through. We eat crisp slices crunchy around the edges, on biscuits, with eggs. There is no liver mush in the North, not the good kind. Scrapple, liver pudding. Not the same thing. We’d come a long way from our last few meals at home. We’d had feasts with multiple courses and breads and salads and soups that my mother’d read about or looked up. Every dinner was a surprise our mother created. I breathed with great relief. Finally, the mother of my dreams. And she seemed happy, too, with her Seven-Up cake and banana-beef stew. Everything was a gift for our delight. We didn’t say delight. But my mother seemed to wait for it, while we picked at saffron mounds and curled our forks under noncountry-fried meats. We should have given our unmitigated delight to her while she still asked for it.
The apartment smelled of the frying liver. I was tempted to fill a skillet with the meat, give each piece no room in the pan. You think you’d get more quicker that way, but it was a fiction. Each piece needed room to flip. Otherwise you’d have a scramble in the bottom of the blackened pan. It took longer this way, but it was worth it. I stood by the stove and admired that Mama took her time with each piece, standing far enough so that the pop of the hot oil couldn’t reach.
“How much longer, Ma?” I asked, and Mama didn’t get mad. Only our second full day in town and she’d gotten a decent job at the A&P. She was in a good mood.
“Three more minutes, maybe,” she said. “Pour some juice while we’re waiting. Don’t spill it,” she said, but there was no irritation in her voice.
“This week I’m working seven to four, but that’s just for training. Next week I’ll get a schedule like everyone else.”
I concentrated on getting the juice in the glasses. Gary would fuss if I got more than he did.
“I could be working any time of the day,” Mama continued. “I’m going to have to rely on you. Okay?”
I knew Mama wanted me to react, to say something, but I wasn’t sure what.
“Who’s gonna keep us then?” I asked finally.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we need to,” she said, putting two pieces on white bread for Gary. She cut the sandwich along the diagonal so he would have a point to hold onto. All of us got our sandwiches and sat in the living room. People I didn’t recognize from other apartments walked past. Car doors slammed, voices wafted from the apartments connected to ours. But we were quiet.
Rockford came on the fuzzy screen. The actor who played him had relatives in the next small town to ours. That’s what they claimed anyway. Rockford had changed his name they said from Bumgarner to Garner, but he was still one of them. Garner was more Hollywood than Bumgarner any day. The episode had Meathead from All in the Family in it. I couldn’t follow the plot very well, but I could tell by the wacky game-show music that the episode was supposed to be funny.
“I need to talk to you,” Mama said.
I wanted to talk to Mama, too.
“Come here.”
I sat beside her on the floor. She took my fingers, ran little circles across my knuckles and palm. I watched her face go blue then dark with the flicker from the television. Maybe if we stayed like this, what she had to say would vanish and nothing could hurt me, like I was certain she was about to do. I leaned against her bra, her sweet deodorant in my nose. I’d seen her scoop the white paste out of the cool jar and smear it under her arms, some of the cream sticking in the slight stubble of black hairs.
“You need to give Reggie a chance, okay?” Mama tightened her grip on my arm. Her head rested on mine. She paused like I was supposed to answer. Though I hadn’t seen him, I knew that Reggie had stayed the night. I heard him fumbling in the hall, his deep whisper as the front lock clicked behind him.
“You’ll like him.”
“Why does he have to be here?” I asked into her breast. I didn’t want to lose her in the moment, but I couldn’t help it.
“When you get older,” Mama said, measuring her words, trying to find just the right degree of motherly insistence, “you’ll realize that grown people need to make decisions.”
I wanted to say that I didn’t like him, but I knew I couldn’t. I wanted to beg her not to make me try.
“I deserve some happiness,” Mama leaned up, her breath left my face. Of course I wanted my mother to be happy.
“You’re just going to have to be nice to him. I don’t want him to leave.”
“Okay.”
“Just be nice. He’ll get used to you. I promise.”
Rockford grinned at Meathead. The show was nearly over, and it was obvious from the music that the characters were gearing up for the last laugh when all the characters gather for the ending shot. This is how we remember them. Mama didn’t get up at the commercial but returned her hot face on my head. Of course other people would love her. I had to make sure they did.
MAMA WOKE ME UP to give me directions about the day. “For breakfast, listen Tash, there’s doughnuts, apples, and milk. Eat the crackers, cheese, and peanut butter for lunch. I don’t want this stove on. Okay?”
I stood in the entranceway to the kitchen half-listening. I walked Ma to the door, no screen, no trees, but sunlight that hit you dead in the face. Forest Acres was just off the belt line near one of the shopping centers. Poor people had nowhere to live in Raleigh anymore, and this project was the answer. At least a temporary one. A cheap fence around the complex made from untreated wood, fancy knockers to camouflage the plywood doors, stairs one summer away from rickety, and soon grass growing wild under the bottom rung of that fence. The place full. Waiting list for the apartments. Soon children will be everywhere. But we would be long gone from there before any of that happened. Right now the paint was still white, the cheap carpet in the apartments still chemical smelling and new.
“Okay, Mama,” I said to her retreating figure. She left the apartment about 7:00, and I went immediately back to bed. After 11:00 I got up to Gary in the front room with a peanut-butter sandwich, a half-eaten doughnut on the carpet beside him. I joined him with my own food.
I’m not sure what time it was when we heard the key in the door, but I knew it was too early for Mama to return. Seconds later, the door swung open.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Reggie said, trying to sound like Fat Albert. Gary laughed a full silly laugh like he’d just heard the funniest joke of his life. Reggie had him that easy. “Ya’ll wanna help?” Reggie said, looking mostly at me. Gary walked outside with Reggie, but I waited at the door. Reggie looked young, green tank top, light blue shorts with thick white piping. He looked like a kid.
I wanted to catch my breath, to recover. In our parking space was a rusted blue truck full of junk it looked like. A short skinny woman and bald younger man were already loading things off. Reggie handed Gary a shoebox.
“You got it, man?” he asked as Gary took the box into the apartment. The woman and the bald kid were wrestling with a mattress. They eventually let it fall over the side of the truck.
“Hey, honey,” she yelled to me. “You direct us?”
“Okay.” She clapped her hands together like something was decided. “This goes in your mama’s room,” she said, and I pointed her and the bald kid to the end of the hall. They moved lawn chairs and boxes of dishes, a beat-up brown recliner, and two garbage bags full of rags that I figured to be Reggie’s clothing. They let Gary carry small things that he acted like was a big deal, like he was proud to do. He made me sick sometimes. I couldn’t wait to get him alone to tell him how he was supposed to be feeling.
Reggie carried in a headboard for a single bed that looked like he’d just peeled off the cartoon stickers. It looked like his first move. If you have never seen poverty it will scare you. Junk packed because it was hard-won. Still I resented Reggie his poverty. He had nothing. At least Daddy had furniture. The table he was born on.
Reggie called the bald kid Mr. Clean. He
was taller than Reggie but had a baby face.
Once everything was in the apartment, the woman got herself a drink from the kitchen, plopped herself on the lounge chair with her legs spread open like a boy’s.
“I’m Annie Belle, baby,” she said to me. “Look here, Reggie, next time you need help don’t call me.” Annie Belle rubbed her hand over her face like she was pulling down a weathered brown shade. Reggie laughed at her with his mouth full of doughnut. He ate it over the open box, flakes of dried icing falling inside.
We hadn’t had a chance to close the door when Mama walked in. I could tell by her expression that she wasn’t sure what she was going to see. I would have been furious with the lawn chairs and unmatched dishes. We’d had nothing this morning, but at least it didn’t look like we’d tried and failed so miserably. Mama peeked into the bedrooms. Our room had a single bed, but her room had a mattress on the floor.
“Oh how wonderful,” she said. And I believe that she meant it. She ran to Reggie and hugged him in front of us. I tried not to show how shocked I was. Mama glanced over at me triumphantly like her prophecy of beds had come true and I was an unbeliever.
“Girl, this is a nice place, you hear me?” Annie Belle said to Ma. Annie Belle was probably only about thirty-three or four, but she seemed older, not exactly older, just road weary, like any minute her front teeth could fall out with decay, her limbs grow crooked and brittle. Mama paused for a minute. She never knew how to respond to black talk. My grandmother would smack her on the mouth if she said anything remotely Negro.
“We’re lucky to be here,” Mama said, looking around the boxy apartment. “There’s a waiting list now.” She circled her arm around Reggie’s waist. And I realized then that Mama and Reggie must have made some plan together. He helped her to find this place, probably encouraged her. I couldn’t see it. Reggie was skinnier than my father but no better looking. All I could see was Daddy did his Christmas shopping at the drugstore and brought home white baby dolls with ugly faces and poorly stitched clothes, Matchbox cars, not the good kind, just the ones everybody had. But we loved that junk. Christmas was about more, not value. None of us understood why Mama was so sullen when she opened her chocolate-covered cherries, the Windsong perfume and talc set with remnants of the big red sale sticker still on the box.
“Get some exercise,” Mama said, gently pushing Gary and me toward the door.
IN THE BACKYARD, the clotheslines cemented into the ground looked like telephone lines stretching out the length of the complex. Our neighbor had clothes out, even her underwear, just one of the signs she was trashy, Mama said. We were bored. All this newness, and Gary and I were already out of possibilities. I wanted to make the best of it, but I just didn’t feel like it. Mr. Clean came out to us, squatted in the grass, pulled two long blades to make a plait. Gary moved closer to him to see what he was doing.
“Can you make a whistle?”
“Nah,” Mr. Clean said, twisting the grass into a ball.
“Yeah, me neither,” Gary nodded like he’d discovered something they had in common.
“Why do they call you Mr. Clean?” Gary stared at Mr. Clean’s head.
“My hair started coming out, and I had to get my head shaved.”
I didn’t want to call him Mr. Clean, it seemed mean. My mother would never use degrading nicknames, even when people asked her to.
“What’s your real name?”
“Tyler. You ask a lot of question, don’t you?”
Gary ducked his head, embarrassed for his interest.
“I like Mr. Clean,” Gary said.
“You want to swing? I can swing you easy.” Gary jumped up from the grass like he’d been chosen for a space mission.
“Yeah, man.”
Mr. Clean grabbed Gary by the ankle and wrist, circled round and round with him, raising and lowering Gary’s body in midair. Gary giggled, leaving trails of spit on his face. Mr. Clean finally put him on the grass.
“I’m drunk,” Gary giggled, trying to get up but staggering each time to the ground.
“I can swing you, too,” Mr. Clean said.
“Okay.”
Mr. Clean put his calloused hands on my arm and leg. His skin was dry, his fingers and palms ashy. His grip hurt a little like an Indian burn. But for a moment or two, I was in flight, the world swinging in a blur, the warm May air in my face, making my eyes water. Mr. Clean tried to put me down gently, but I landed on my chin in a spot of red clay. It hurt but somehow was worth it. I wanted to ask Mr. Clean to take me in the air again. I wanted to feel the weight lifting off of me—his hands, my limbs as I floated, his eyes wide watching me spin. At the curb I noticed a little girl, maybe my age, maybe as old as twelve. It was hard to tell. She was tall but no breast buds or hips. I always noticed that when I saw a new kid. Did she or didn’t she? The white girl tried to look like she wasn’t watching; she wanted to play.
“You want to swing?” Mr. Clean said to the girl.
“Okay,” she shrugged, pretending not to be especially interested.
“What’s your name?” I said. I wanted her to know that I was in charge here.
“Sela McAllister.”
Sela was taller and heavier than either Gary or I was, and Mr. Clean couldn’t get her as high, but she still looked beautiful. Her face still and composed, her eyes closed, a stern look for a little girl.
“Tasha,” Mama yelled from the doorway. “Dinner.”
“We’ve got to go,” I said to Sela. “Do you want something to eat?” I knew Mama would kill me for inviting someone, but I was hungry for child talk with a girl, any girl. I’d asked Sela before I even remembered that she would see the ugly lawn chairs inside, not even a kitchen table.
“I’ve got to go,” she said like she could hardly care at all, and I watched her run to her apartment around the circle. There have been many heartbreaks in my life, sorry men, worthless jobs, but the first one I can remember is watching Sela’s pale legs fly upwards, pound one after the other on the blacktop, her dark thin hair swinging behind her. My mother calling again and again.
“COME ON,” Reggie said, motioning to Mama from the door, “come outside.” Mama shot me a look but didn’t say anything. I willed my face to look undisturbed.
Gary and I stayed up late. We both wanted to see Johnny Carson, and neither of us had ever been up past the introductory music.
“Go splash water on your face,” I told Gary, but it was too late. His head was already jerking forward, losing the fight to sleep.
The adults came back into the apartment. I thought Mama was feeling sick, her face drawn like she’d been scared, but I quickly realized that she was trying not to laugh.
Mama shook Gary’s arm. “Go to bed,” she whispered, and Gary staggered up, a dopey look on his face. I thought if I could stay quiet, I might go unnoticed. I leaned against the itchy brown recliner willing myself still.
“Put some water on it, man,” Reggie laughed though he was trying not to.
“Butter will be better,” Mama giggled.
Mr. Clean looked in the refrigerator. I could have told him there was no butter. He let his finger under the running water.
“You gonna be all right,” Annie Belle said toward the kitchen.
“I told you to quit playing with that lighter.”
“Don’t make fun of him, Reggie,” Mama said. Reggie and Mama sat on the floor, Mama’s head in Reggie’s lap, him running his finger along the inside of her arm. “I told you to quit playing with that lighter.”
“I hate a fire,” Annie Belle said between squint-eyed cowboy puffs of her cigarette. They say black don’t crack, but her full lips crinkled at the edges as she sucked on the cigarette. “When my sister got married, about twelve years ago, I seen her dress rise up in a flame. A whole brass candlestick, about ten or twelve of them, fall over and set Ricker’s Chapel on fire.”
“That didn’t happen,” Reggie said.
“I know it didn’t. I saw a future fire.”<
br />
Mama hated talk about ghosts or supernatural things and ignored people who did, called them small-minded. One time a neighbor told her to put red pepper in her shoes for a safe trip. Mama could barely look the woman in the face without rolling her eyes.
“I know Pam and James had a nice wedding. Her dress didn’t catch fire, like I seen, but it wasn’t two, maybe three months later that the kitchen of Pam’s new trailer caught fire and melted everything in it as black as tar. Everybody says they only make them trailers for looks. If a big man jumps too hard that thing will shake like an earthquake. But you still don’t expect your kitchen to curl up and die like that.”
Reggie put his forehead on the carpet and moaned, “Annie Belle’s got powers. You got a crystal ball over there?” Reggie giggled at his joke.
“I know one damn thing, you ain’t shit, ain’t gonna be shit, and never was shit,” Annie Belle tried not to laugh when she said it.
I stored that expression for future use. Reggie laughed, but I could see from my mother’s face she wasn’t sure. Reggie pressed his lips on my mother’s fleshy upper arm near her underarm. I thought how I’d hate that, a man’s lips in my private space, in a crook of myself like he had a right. Reggie stood up and pulled Mama into his body. She giggled and didn’t look back but went outside. I would scream if I could think of any reason. But there was no mouse or spider or strange man’s face at the window, nothing that I could name. “Mama,” I yelled to her. “Where are you going?”
My mother slung her head back, fixed her eyes on me like she was seeing me for the first time. She turned and said nothing to me.
“How did the fire start?” Mr. Clean asked.
Annie Belle stalled a second, not sure if Mr. Clean was making fun of her. “See Pam’s boyfriend, not Carlo the original one, but Derrick, left some Jiffy Pop on the stove to go out to talk to some of them shabby friends he had. I told her she ought to grab her some grass seed and some rakes and put all their rusty asses to work.”
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