by Nikki Grimes
IT’S JUST A QUESTION
Why study
imaginary numbers
if they don’t exist?
I raised my hand
to ask Mr. Peters
this question in class
but he couldn’t see past
his pet students
in the front row.
As always,
he pretended
their chairs
were a wall
cutting off
the rest of us.
So I stood
and called
my question out
refusing to let him
make me feel
invisible.
DECEMBER 25
The phrase “It’s better to give than to receive” usually sticks in my throat. I’ve been on the receiving end too few times for the novelty to wear off, I suppose. The Christmas season brings that to mind. CeCe thinks my Christmas spirit is rather stunted, whereas I think hers is overgrown.
There ought to be a law against CeCe haunting used-goods stores this time of year. She sifts through baskets of old-fashioned, hand-stitched decorations as if she’s panning for gold, then raids Woolworth’s sales bin. Her warped sense of humor drives her to buy outrageously tacky things such as those fat coils of blindingly green tinsel she insists on draping across our windows—the ones facing the street unfortunately. I don’t know why I argue for stenciled snowflakes. I never win.
Yesterday Lady Christmas brought home the biggest tree to be found outside of Rockefeller Center. It’s slightly smaller than the one she bought last year. The poor living room furniture is huddled in one corner, barely beyond the reach of the tree’s sticky branches.
Our apartment is now perfumed in pine, a smell I can’t get enough of. The colored lights are doing their dance around the tree, winking off and on, off and on, entertaining me while I’m setting the table for dinner, and I’m thinking, Yeah, Christmas is okay. I didn’t used to feel that way.
There’s not much underneath the tree this year, but CeCe helped me get my best friend, Destinee, something special. My sister’s so relieved I’m not hanging out with drug fiends or gang members, she probably chipped in on this gift as a way to reward Destinee for being my friend. I’m just guessing. CeCe might change her mind, though, if she knew about the day Destinee and I spent smoking pot at Carlton’s, but she won’t hear it from me.
Destinee came over last night to share Christmas Eve dinner with us. The evening would’ve been perfect except that CeCe got on me about refusing to go with her to see Mom that morning. Come to think of it, that must be my guilt speaking, because all she actually did was mention that Mom had asked for me. In any case, Destinee took my mind off the subject when she looked under the tree. Her eyes popped when she found the gigantic box we’d placed there with her name on it. Of course, before we let her open it, we made her suffer through dinner.
Well, suffer isn’t the right word. As always, CeCe had prepared enough food for an army. Turkey, ham stuck with cloves and braised with pineapple juice, corn pudding with a crusty brown glaze, string beans, macaroni and cheese, sweet potato pie. According to my nose, it was Thanksgiving all over again. My mouth wanted to test the theory, but CeCe grabbed her camera and made me wait until she could snap a few pictures of the spread, before the hoards, meaning Destinee and I, descended on the table and picked it clean. She took four or five shots of us at the table as well, then sat down, scooched her chair next to mine for a quick portrait, and turned the camera over to Destinee.
“Smile!” said Destinee, clicking away.
“Okay, okay!” I said. “I’m dying! Let’s eat!”
Afterward we cleared the dishes and put the card table away so we’d have room to maneuver. With the Christmas tree hogging so much space, moving around our living room was tricky. CeCe poured each of us a glass of eggnog, then nodded to me. “Now,” she said.
I gave Destinee the box with her name on it, and smiled. She set the package on her lap and pierced the tape with her fingernail, careful not to tear the wrapping paper more than necessary. That’s right, I thought. Take your time, Be your usual meticulous self.
Destinee brushed back her blunt-cut bangs, ran a hand through her straight, black Dutch Boy hair, then waded elbow-deep through wads of tissue paper and newspaper strips until she came to a second package. She looked up at me, grinning, and slowly unwrapped the box, stopping to neatly fold the red-and-green foil. Then she gingerly dug through shredded paper, and balls of cotton, and handfuls of confetti until she came to a third, smaller box. This time she raised an eyebrow. I bit my tongue and watched Destinee make her way through boxes four and five. I fought so hard to keep from laughing, I thought lockjaw was imminent. So I opened my mouth and sang, “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,” along with Nat “King” Cole, whose whispery voice floated up from the stereo. “Jack Frost nipping at your nose,” I sang at the top of my lungs. I’m a pretty good singer, and I made sure my voice blended with Nat’s.
CeCe busied herself cracking walnuts and flicking the shells into a red-and-green dish next to the bowl of nuts on the coffee table. Meanwhile we both kept anxious eyes on Destinee as she shook out each piece of paper, worried that she’d dropped whatever it was we swore we’d gotten for her.
By this point I was ready to concede that maybe I did have a slight mean streak in me, but when Destinee got down on hands and knees to feel underneath the furniture for the gift she was afraid she’d lost, CeCe and I burst out laughing and gave up the game.
While I felt under the tree for Destinee’s real gift, CeCe put our “Messiah” album on the turntable. It was Dad’s favorite Christmas music, and always makes us think of him. CeCe set the record needle down gently, the album being pretty old and fragile, then she nodded to me.
“Okay,” I said to Destinee, giving her a wink. “Open your hands.” When she did, I placed a tiny gift in them. It was wrapped in gold foil, in a box the size of a doll’s purse. I held my breath while she opened it. Inside was a pearl, set in gold filigree, dangling from a 14-karat chain. I’d picked it out myself. I’ve been wanting one for the longest time.
Surprise suits some people more than others, and it sure looked good on Destinee last night. When she saw that pearl, her eyes lit like two suns rising, and that light spread across her face until the only thing in the room brighter than the tree was her smile.
It’s weird, but the second I saw Destinee’s joy, something inside made me wish I had more to give. And not once did it cross my mind to ask, or even care, whether she had any gift for me.
CeCe says there may be hope for me yet.
DECEMBER 31
All things are possible,” CeCe is fond of saying. But she was shocked when I volunteered to visit Mom today. It’s December 31st, my last chance to see her before this year is gone completely. “All things in good season,” I said. Throwing her words back at her gives me a kick. I don’t get to do it often.
I understand why she was so surprised, though. I’ve put off going to see Mom for a long time, and CeCe knows why.
I hate hospitals.
CeCe and I are experts on the subject of medical institutions. We’ve visited them often enough. I had to force myself to go when Daddy had his car accident, and he’s one person I’d go to the moon for.
Daddy’s condition was serious, I knew, because he was in the intensive care unit. His room was easy to find, but hard to enter. I lingered, trembling in the hospital corridor, inches from Daddy’s door, light-years away from any sort of peace. “Your daddy’s been badly hurt,” Mom warned. I asked her if he’d make it. “Honey,” she said, “time will tell.”
The smell escaping from his room seemed lethal, a mix of rubbing alcohol and antiseptic designed to fight off disease, though Death himself might squeeze past the sentries at any time.
In three weeks I was
an old hand at nonchalantly pushing past the tubes that snaked their way to and from Dad’s broken body. (People said his car resembled an accordion.) Whenever I planted a kiss on his forehead, its coolness made me shiver. I couldn’t stand to see him that way. Sometimes I’d whisper, Daddy, please don’t leave me. But the doctors said the brain damage was so extensive that if he lived he would never be the same, and I know he would’ve hated that, so CeCe and I prayed for him to die, which my aunt thought was a blasphemy. But we loved him best, and death was the kindest thing we could wish for him.
The cruel rhythm of the oxygen machine gave me second thoughts every time its irritating buzz was interrupted by stretches of uneasy silence. My heart pounded out a mini-marathon inside my chest while I held, and held, and held my breath, my teeth clenched of their own volition, until at last that annoying apparatus started up again, wickedly taunting or blessedly assuring me that Daddy would live to see another day.
And then there was Mom, amazing me with her tears. After years of divorce, and two other husbands, there she was crying, and telling Dad that she’d love him forever. “Wouldn’t it be great,” she said one day, “if you and I could get back together again? You pull through this, I swear, I’ll be there for you.” Her words must’ve cut through the semi-coma Dad was in, because he cried.
I looked up at Mom then, and saw love shining in her eyes. They were full of sorrow, but also full of light. Dad died three days later, and so did the light in Mom’s eyes. It’s the idea of losing the light in mine that worries me the most. I don’t want to end up in a mental institution like Mom. The thought of stepping into one gives me the creeps.
I actually know what a vacant stare is, and I wish to God I didn’t. But so many of the people in those places have them. They shuffle through the corridors pale as ghosts, and when I walk among them, I imagine I’m the only flesh and blood thing around for miles. The fact that one of those ghosts is my mom makes matters even worse. She is my mom, though, and I figured it was time for me to visit.
CeCe went with me, of course. There wouldn’t be much point in me going alone, since Mom and I rarely move beyond discussions of the day’s barometric pressure. I gave up attempts at meaningful dialogue with her long ago. I need to talk about what’s on my mind, and how I feel inside, but Mom has no patience with that sort of thing, and expressions of emotions—hers or anyone else’s—practically gives her hives.
The state mental institution Mom is in resembles a penitentiary, which seems about right. Her mental illness is a kind of prison, her mind a place where she keeps hurtful thoughts and feelings locked away. When we entered her room, she was slouched in a corner near the gated window. I almost didn’t recognize the girlish stranger, with fresh scrubbed face, and thick cornrows.
“Mom? Look who’s here,” said CeCe. Mom turned from the window. When her eyes fell on me, they lit up, erasing a bit of the strangeness I felt.
“Hi, baby,” she said. Mom, who is not big on touching, reached toward me, her arms trembling and hungry for my hug. I hesitated a second too long for CeCe’s taste apparently. She gave me a slight push. Knock if off, I said to CeCe with a backward glare. Then I crossed the room, pecked Mom on the cheek, and gave her a squeeze. Her small frame slid into the circle of my arms, and she felt so sheer, it made me gasp. I forget that, of the two of us, I’m the one who’s bigger and stronger. It doesn’t seem right somehow, and I hate it.
I let my arms drop, afraid to hold her any longer. CeCe suggested we head for the visitors’ lounge.
Mom, in a faded blue housedress and paper-thin slippers, walked between us. We passed several patients on the way, one an old gentleman with matted salt-and-pepper hair.
“Morning, Mr. Lewis,” said Mom. Mr. Lewis nodded to her and CeCe, smiling, then turned his eyes on me.
“You must be Jazmin,” he said. “I wondered when you’d come.” My mouth dropped open, and by the time I gathered the words to ask him how he knew my name, he was gone. Mom greeted another patient, a plump lady she called Mrs. Ramirez, with flawless skin the color of flan, and eyes like black marbles, rolling over me from head to toe. She swept me up with a broad and familiar grin, as if I were a long-lost cousin.
“Jazmin,” she said, “it’s good you come to see your madre.”
As soon as Mrs. Ramirez was out of earshot, I tugged Mom’s arm. “Okay,” I said. “How do these people know who I am?”
“They’re in Group with me,” she said. “I showed them pictures of you. CeCe brought them on her first visit.”
“Group? What’s Group?”
“Therapy. We have it once a week.”
I was flabbergasted. In all the years of hospital stays, Mom has never agreed to participate in group therapy, even when her doctors at Bellevue begged her to. “I don’t believe in all that bleeding in public,” she’d say. “Telling strangers your personal business. No. I’d rather keep to myself.” Now suddenly Mom’s attending Group.
The visiting area was at the far end of the corridor. It consisted of overstuffed love seats and matching chairs, loosely grouped in squares scattered around the room. It was supposed to be cozy, but it felt forced. When you sat there, you had to face the people you were with, which, I suppose, was the point.
I sat on one sofa, glued to CeCe. Mom sat down on the sofa across from us. She waited for me to speak, but my lips weren’t moving. My fingers, however, were busy drumming against my knees.
“So, Jazmin, how are you?” she asked. “How have you been?”
“Fine,” I said.
“That’s good.” Silence. “And school? How’s school?”
“Pretty good,” I said, shrugging. “School is fine.”
CeCe, an expert at balancing lopsided conversation, filled the silence with chatter. Mom looked as relieved as I felt.
This is dumb, I thought. You’ve come all this way. Say something.
“What do you do in Group?” I asked abruptly.
“We talk,” she said. “About ourselves, our families, the problems that brought us here. And it feels . . . good.”
I looked deep into Mom’s eyes and found the truth of it, and saw more peace there than I had since Daddy died.
For a long time after the funeral Mom seemed okay. We’d moved to a new apartment in the Bronx, and I was so busy getting settled in my new school, and fighting off my own sorrow, I didn’t notice anything wrong with Mom. I mean, I didn’t expect any major grieving on her part. Not with all the years they’d been separated. But then one day I came in from the Laundromat, and I was putting clean clothes in her dresser drawer, and found something I wish I hadn’t. A pint of gin, tucked between her lingerie. She’d started drinking again, which spelled trouble.
This time I decided to skip the remaining stages of her self-destruct sequence. I telephoned CeCe and asked her to come for me. I’ve been with her ever since. There was never any question of my staying with Grandma. She’s told us often enough that she’s got her own life, and there’s no room in it for kids.
Mom let me go to CeCe’s without much argument. I guess she didn’t have any fight left in her. She managed to stay on her feet for a couple more months. Then Grandma got a call from the police one day. They’d found Mom wandering the streets, snarling at imaginary enemies. Thank God she had her purse and phone book on her, so they knew who to call.
Grandma cried when she signed the commitment papers. Unfortunately the doctors let Mom out two weeks later, once she convinced them she was lucid. But she was back again in a month.
It seems she’s been in long enough to make real progress. I mean, my mom in group therapy, bleeding in front of strangers. Man! She may not be talking to me, but at least she’s talking to someone. I guess she had to make up her own mind that it was time to get help. No one else could do it for her. Not even me.
Maybe this time she’ll get well and stay that way. Maybe.
I reached over and squeezed Mom
’s hand. She smiled and squeezed mine back. We spoke with our eyes, and let CeCe rattle on for a while without interruption. When it was time to go, CeCe gave her a stack of magazines and paperbacks to read, and I gave her a blank book to write in. I also gave her a hug, this time without any coaxing.
“I’m glad you’re getting better, Mom,” I whispered. “I love you.” Then Mom did the strangest thing. She stepped back, took my face in her hands, and let me see her tears. And she stared deep into me. Not just into my eyes, but deeper, as if she were taking an X ray of my heart.
“I love you too, Jazmin,” she said.
Something lodged in my throat and made it difficult for me to swallow. CeCe said good-bye for both of us. She squeezed my shoulder, massaging strength into me, as we walked through the hospital corridor.
I dabbed at my cheeks and looked around for a stairwell.
MOVING DAY
CeCe calls me
her stubborn
flower
bent on
blooming
where I’m
planted.
JANUARY 29
CeCe says the Devil’s got no use for people like us because we refuse to stay down for long. We’re like those Timex watches. We take a licking and keep on ticking. Our family must be wired that way. Even Mom is starting to show some fight.
During the months since I started this notebook, there’ve been moments that bore into me like construction workers jackhammering a city street. But like the ground underneath, I’m still here, although my “here” is about to change: CeCe reserved a moving van yesterday.
Come tomorrow we’ll be toughing things out further uptown.
I groaned when she announced we’d be relocating, though I wasn’t surprised. Two years in the same place? Please! I probably would’ve tired of this neighborhood soon anyway. I only wish CeCe’d talked with me first. I would’ve okay’d the move, but I might’ve suggested waiting until spring. The end of January is too cold for heavy labor, if you ask me. Well, CeCe didn’t. But then, I’ve got so many choices and decisions to make each day, I hardly have time to blink. Maybe it’s best CeCe decided this one thing on her own. Whether we move in winter or spring doesn’t much matter. There is no good or easy season for saying good-bye.