That one year of peace could have been forever, could have sustained us all, but that year began to crumble with one day. Ours started with me in the living room, messing around with Momma’s brand new record player. I was so intrigued by that little contraption and set out to understand how a small needle touching vinyl could produce Tina Turner’s voice singing “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” and Michael Jackson’s high tenor on “We Are the World.” Since those were the only two records Momma owned, I listened to them repeatedly, waiting for the true magic of the thing to reveal itself.
I lay on the carpet, feet perched on the blue suede couch Momma and Mr. Todd had leased soon after we moved to Wall Street, and let the music sink into me. I marveled at how something so smooth could come from vinyl, metal, screws, and a needle. I rested my hands on my full belly, rested my mind on the peace in that moment. Whenever I was completely satisfied, and when nothing hurt, I could see and hear things I couldn’t when my stomach was growling or when I was in pain. I felt every note of Tina Turner’s question. I felt years of her and my disappointment in the line, “Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?” I heard the tears she must have cried in order to own the sorrow of that song. I knew them all too well, but on that day, those tears were as far from me as the circumstances that had created them.
That night, as Momma cooked dinner, a delectable pot roast with clouds of mashed potatoes wrought with speckles of unmelted butter, a loud yelp emanated from the bathroom. Mr. Todd’s scream cut through the walls as either the word “Lord” or “Lois” reached my ears. Momma scurried into the bathroom. I heard a gasp and then whispering. No matter how close I got to the bathroom door, I couldn’t hear what they were saying. As Momma exited the bathroom, I heard, “You need to go to the hospital for that.”
About an hour later, Mr. Todd emerged with a grimace on his face. He spoke little during dinner and barely looked up from his plate. Momma fed us quickly and then ordered us to our rooms. As I lay in the softness of my bed, next to Mary’s warmth, I wondered what “that” was and how it would affect our family. Maybe he was dying like Uncle Junie had. Or maybe he had gotten sick like I did and had contracted pneumonia. I couldn’t imagine what sickness could permeate the muscles that pressed out of every part of his body; even so, I prayed his illness wouldn’t cause us to leave our new home, and I prayed it wouldn’t make all of the food in the refrigerator disappear with him, and I prayed I’d always be able to recline on that plush blue carpet, with legs hiked on the softest sofa ever created, listening to Tina Turner’s lament, while trying to find answers to her and my many questions.
A couple of days later, I overheard Momma talking to our next-door neighbor, Miss Minnie, about the “that” which had silenced Mr. Todd. Miss Minnie was in the kitchen while Momma washed dishes. She was a large woman and at least thirty years Momma’s senior. She sat in one of the dining room chairs, as parts of her body, too large for the seat, spilled over the sides and the back. Miss Minnie often spent time at our home, advising Momma on how she should be running her and our lives. Always in other people’s business, she was the one who told Momma I needed a bra because my little nubs poked through my shirt whenever I made dirt cakes with my back-door neighbor, Thomasina. She actually brought me my first training bra, a yellow band of material that stretched tightly across my chest with the words “Human Beans” etched on the front, next to two dancing kidney beans. The material restricted my skin and made me feel as if I were being punished for living too free of a life in my body.
There was also my fifth grade picture day, when Momma had promised she would straighten my hair so I’d look pretty for my pictures, and I had bragged to Jackie Brown, my forever rival and the only gay boy in the fifth grade, that my pictures were going to look way better than his. Every day, Jackie said, “Your Momma’s not going to straighten your hair. Y’all too poor to have a straightening comb,” and I would strike back with “Shut up, girl,” or “Y’all too poor to have a house.” I couldn’t wait until I bopped into school on picture day with my reddish brown hair against the back of my neck, flipped into feathers that I could shake toward Jackie. The day before Momma was to straighten my hair, she had lent the straightening comb to Miss Minnie. When she got it back, the teeth in the comb weren’t visible. It was as if the entire comb had been dipped in a vat of black wax that had made the former comb one block of metal. Momma stood in front of the stove, heating the comb, trying to get the gunk of Miss Minnie’s hair out of the teeth.
“I don’t know, Laurie,” she said. “This is dried up dirt, grease, muck, and whatever else was in Miss Minnie’s head. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to straighten your hair tonight.”
All I could see was Jackie laughing at me the next day, dancing around, singing, “I told you y’all was too poor.”
“But Momma,” I whined, “Can’t you just clean it. Tomorrow’s picture day.”
Momma soaked the straightening comb in a sink filled with hot water and soap for ten minutes. As she pulled it out of the water and inspected it against the light, I could see that the greasy sludge was still trapped between the teeth. I cried tears reserved for ten-year-olds whose lives are officially over. Momma took small rags, slips of paper, tips of scissors, and attempted to push the grime out of the teeth of the comb. When she ran the paper through one of the teeth, a long line of oiliness spread across the paper’s whiteness.
“I can’t do this, Laurie. I’m not going to put this on your hair.” I didn’t know what I could say that would make Momma change her mind. I didn’t care if the sludge got into my hair. I didn’t care if I lost every strand of my hair the day after picture day, but on that night, I needed Momma to straighten my hair so I could shake my hair like the white girls in my classroom.
I pleaded, but Momma shook her head no, which caused me to get ornery. “Why do I have to suffer because Miss Minnie has nasty hair?” Momma looked directly into my face and placed her hands on her hips. Her lips were drawn in tightly and her chest poked out like she had transformed from sympathetic mother to enforcer. She didn’t have to say another word. I knew the answer to my pleas. So I silently cried as Momma created four ponytails facing the outer regions of my head. I loudly cried when Jackie pointed at me the next day and called my ponytails doo-doo balls in front of the whole class, the teacher, and the photographer. And, I sat in my picture with tear-stained eyes, a red nose, and a muted line across my face as I cursed Miss Minnie, her nasty hair, and her training-bra-giving self.
Despite the disdain I felt for Miss Minnie, on that day, as she sat in the kitchen with Momma, I appreciated her for talking to Momma about Mr. Todd and whatever ailment had caused him to yelp two nights before.
“You know, he was bleeding,” Momma said.
“Where?” The air escaping Miss Minnie’s mouth sounded more like an exhalation than a question.
“Down there.” Momma’s voice grew deeper. “And from his nose.”
I didn’t know exactly what “down there” meant, but I knew people’s noses normally bled when they were punched in them or they blew too hard. Maybe Mr. Todd’s illness wasn’t as bad as I’d originally imagined.
“From the nose,” Miss Minnie said and let out small “hmpf” at the end of her sentence. They both paused and I imagined Miss Minnie inspecting the words in her mind before she released them from her mouth. “You know,” she paused again. “He could be on that stuff.”
“Huh,” Momma said. “Nah,” and she let out a laugh that was not truly her own, one that fell flat out of her mouth, instead of bouncing as Momma’s laughs usually did. I didn’t know what the bleeding meant, and I didn’t know what “the stuff” was, but I knew from Momma’s nonlaugh something was soon going to be wrong.
After Momma’s conversation with Miss Minnie, I noticed Mr. Todd leaving earlier and coming home later, especially on Friday nights. I’d hear him shuffling into the living room, past Mary’s and my den-bedroom to a waiting Momma. As soon as their bedroom door closed
, the arguing began. Momma asked, “Where have you been and why are you coming in here so late?”
“I was hanging with some of the guys, just drinking and playing cards.”
“Which guys and why are your eyes looking like that?”
“You know, all of the guys. And my eyes look like what? I’m just tired after a long day at work.”
“Where’s your paycheck? We need to buy food.”
“I lent it to my friend and why are you hassling me?
“You know what I’m talking about and I know what you’re doing.”
That comment earned Momma a bout of snickers. As I heard their voices draw closer together, I imagined Mr. Todd giggling his way toward Momma, nuzzling his nose in the crook of her neck, kissing away the fear in her voice. Maybe she smelled the liquor that he spoke of when he got closer to her. Maybe the way he mounted her, entered her, helped her envision him playing Spades, Gin Rummy, or Tonk with his friends. Maybe it was just she wanted to believe he was what we needed him to be. I did not know, but what I did know was his late nights, early mornings, empty pockets, and even redder eyes began to inform my definition of “the stuff.” And even as I listened to Momma’s fast, gentle pants commingling with Mr. Todd’s heavy, spasmodic moans, I worried “the stuff” would eventually drown out those soft moments between Momma and Mr. Todd. I wondered what would be left between the two of them then.
On one such night, Momma and Mr. Todd were going through the routine payday script. The only difference was he came home earlier and he was visibly altered. His eyes were fixated on the floor, and the curve in his back resembled a question mark. His leathery skin looked dusty, with an almost yellowish haze similar to pollen bathing a blade of grass. His peppered hair was knottier than normal and each line of sweat that ran from his hairline seemed to be vying for a spot on his chin. Momma stared glassily at him as he entered the house. She’d just gotten off work and there wasn’t much food in the refrigerator. That meant she still had a long night of shopping and cooking before she’d be able to go to bed.
Momma’s “Where have you been?” swooshed out of her mouth, absent the weight of anger I knew she had intended. Mr. Todd continued to stare at the floor, responding only with the rise and fall of his back. I darted my eyes from Momma to Mr. Todd, waiting for a giggle or an angry word to move the dialogue along. Momma screamed, “I’m tired of this mess” and walked toward him.
In one blink, one inhalation, one swallow, Mr. Todd was on top of Momma, with his hands wrapped around her neck and his face, vicious, snarling inches away from Momma’s. Champ, Dathan, and I jumped from our seats and clamored over Mr. Todd’s back. When I grabbed the top of his arm, I was disturbed by how large it was and how hard it felt.
Mary screamed, “Momma, Momma” while she pulled Mr. Todd by his leg. Tom-Tom, in his five-year-old voice, splattered words I couldn’t understand. Still, I knew he was saying what my mind was screaming, “Get off of my momma.”
I watched as Mr. Todd’s hands tightened around Momma’s neck and as her eyes cycled from resentment, to alarm, to terror. I watched as the veins in his arms pulsed underneath his skin each time he whispered in Momma’s face, “I will kill you.” I watched all those things until I saw Champ’s twelve-year-old fist connect with Mr. Todd’s jaw.
It was as if time were running in reverse; Champ’s arm recoiled so swiftly from Mr. Todd’s face, it looked as if he were elbowing the air behind him. Momma wriggled from Mr. Todd’s grasp and backtracked, retracing the path that had gotten her within his reach. She grabbed Champ, pushed him into the kitchen and out of the back door. The house shook with our screams as if it were continuing the fight Momma and Mr. Todd had begun. I stood in front of him, holding Tom-Tom and Mary’s hands. Dathan stood close to me, with tears covering his cheeks. I feared speaking, moving, breathing. Even at eleven, I understood why Momma had left. He would have hurt Champ. I saw that in the eyes filled with fury that followed Champ’s fist, but as I stood in front of him, his chest heaving, with balled fists and sweat-soaked skin, I wished Momma hadn’t left us alone.
Mr. Todd wiped his face with a swipe of his hand and searched on the floor, for what I did not know. He then adjusted the chairs and pushed each one neatly under the table. He never made eye contact with me, but my eyes never left him. Finally, with a sluggishness that petrified me, he walked past us into the bedroom. As soon as I heard the door close, I hurried Mary, Dathan, and Tom-Tom into the boys’ room and locked the door behind us. One after the other, I hoisted my younger brothers and sister onto the top bunk. After all three of them were on the bed, I climbed up and held my body close to theirs. Mary and Tom-Tom were still crying while Dathan sucked his thumb and looked out of the window. I looked out of the window too and contemplated lowering the four of us out to safety, but the windows were too small. What had once made me feel safe now held us captive.
“Why did Momma leave us?” Mary asked
“I know,” Dathan echoed.
“He gonna kill us?” Tom-Tom asked.
“No,” I scoffed. “Momma’ll be back,” was all I could say as I silently prayed I was telling the truth.
I had no watch, no clock to track time, so I counted Mary’s breaths in order to tell how much time had passed. I was on the eighteenth set of Mary’s sixty when I heard a loud knock at the front door. Momma’s bedroom door creaked open as I listened. From the window, I saw Momma and Champ running to the back door. I vaulted from the bunk bed and ran out of the room as my siblings followed.
We all congregated in the dining room, where the brawl had begun. I ran straight to Momma and wrapped my hands around her waist. She wasn’t as physically brittle as she had been before she married Mr. Todd, but she wore the same anxiety I’d often seen in Academy Park when she stared into our empty refrigerator, trying to find something to cook on our hungriest nights.
Momma looked down at me as I clung to her. She kept Champ tucked safely behind her as the policeman walked to the dining room with Mr. Todd. The officer was a young white man, with brown hair that sat bunched on the top of his head. His face was clean-shaven and looked pale compared to Mr. Todd’s hardened mug. Even though he stood a foot taller than Mr. Todd, he looked weak next to the bulging muscles twitching under Mr. Todd’s tank top. “We got a call about a disturbance at this address. You know anything about that?” the policeman asked. Momma looked to Mr. Todd as if he held the answer to that question, as if he had called the cops instead of her. The officer looked from Momma to Mr. Todd, waiting for one of them to respond. Mr. Todd spoke first.
“Nothing’s wrong. We were just arguing,” he said. The officer looked into Momma’s eyes and I’m certain he saw what I saw, red clouds surrounding her pupils, broken veins swimming in what should have been the whites of her eyes, and dry tears staining her face.
“Ma’am, is this what happened?” he asked.
Momma spoke softly, but quickly,
“We were arguing, and he put his hands on me.” She wrapped her fragile fingers around her neck as she spoke.
“But did he hit you, ma’am?” the officer asked.
“She hit me too,” Mr. Todd interrupted. “And her son hit me in my face,” he continued.
“Is that true, ma’am?” the officer asked.
“Well,” I felt Momma’s weight shifting from one leg to the other as she attempted to respond.
“Did you or your son hit him, ma’am?” Momma replied with silence.
“See,” Mr. Todd said. “He hit me right here.” He pointed at a nonexistent mark on his cheek.
“Ma’am, if I arrest him, I have to arrest you and take your son too.” Momma glared at the officer while he explained the dilemma. “If you or your son hit him, then the court has to decide which one of you is at fault.” This time Momma did reply, but not with softness or silence.
“Are you saying you’d arrest me and my son?” she hissed.
“Ma’am, I’m saying if you press charges and he presses charges, I’d have
to arrest everyone who is charged and let the courts figure it out.” He looked sheepishly at Mr. Todd as he said this.
Momma raised her hand quickly, a gesture that meant it was time for him to be quiet. Surprisingly, the officer obeyed as if he were one of us children. “I just want you to take him from here. I’ll deal with the rest later.” The officer shook his head from side-to-side, waiting to speak until Momma gave him permission. Momma raised her eyes, a signal he could explain himself.
“Ma’am, if he’s your husband, I can’t make him leave. Sir, are you willing to leave?” he asked Mr. Todd.
“I ain’t going nowhere,” Mr. Todd said.
“Then I can’t make him leave. This is marital property. What’s his is yours and vice versa. If he’s your husband, I can’t make him leave.”
We all trained our eyes on the officer, not understanding his words, allowing Momma’s sighs to translate for us.
“Ma’am, the only thing that I can offer you is a ride somewhere so you won’t have to sleep here tonight.” Momma stared hard at the policeman. Tears began to crowd the corners of her eyes. “Do you have anywhere to go?” he asked.
“Where can I go?” Momma asked. “I have five kids and it’s almost ten o’clock at night.”
“Ma’am, I can take you to a shelter if you want,” he said. As Momma became the one with the shaking head, I grew weary of the policeman’s “Ma’ams.” He wasn’t saying it like Momma had taught us to, quickly and with respect. He was saying it like I said “girl” to Thomasina when she wouldn’t taste our dirt cakes, so I could see if they were done. Now, he wasn’t even looking at Momma or us as he rushed Momma to a decision. “What would you like to do, ma’am?”
Momma told us to get our coats and some clothes for the next day while she went into her bedroom and gathered her things. We quickly jumped at her command and began searching for our clothes. I had just grabbed my pajamas from my bedroom when I heard Momma rush back into the dining room, “I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “This is my house too.”
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