“Well, as I was saying before you got me off on Aunt T, and Al Green, I called about your sister.” I never had to ask which one. I had four sisters, one had passed, two were referred to by name, and the fourth was always called “your sister.”
“What has Ophelia done now, Mommy?” I asked, waiting to hear about another crazy boyfriend, or some kind of money-making scheme she was trying to pull my mother into. “Well, you know she has always been a little on the selfish side.”
When it came to Ophelia, my mother was the queen of understatement. Saying that Ophelia was a little selfish would be like saying Hitler was a little mean. Ophelia thought only of herself. She was the mother of three children, and they existed only for her pleasure.
As soon as I thought of the children, I knew why my mother was calling.
“No Mom, don't tell me. She's pregnant again?” I asked expecting the worse.
“Alright, then I won't tell you,” My mother said right before she hung up.
I called back immediately, knowing that I had better. Once when my mother did this, and I hadn't returned the call quickly, I was talked about for weeks. I knew this because my relatives all called to tell me how horrible I had been to my mother.
“Mom, what is she going to do?” I asked as if there hadn't been a break in the conversation.
“Well,” my mother said slowly, “you know your sister. She gonna do what pleases her. Most likely that will be to have the baby. I don't know for sure, but I don't think that girl would ever think about having no abortion. I know you way more liberal than that, but well, you got your own life.”
I had never discussed my false pregnancy with my mother. It happened during my marriage that lasted two years and too long. My now ex-husband decided that we didn't need children, because I was not ready for them. I agreed with him, but it was not until after we were divorced that I was glad that I had.
After the decision was made for me to have an abortion, we went to the doctor's office. Although my tests were all positive, nothing appeared on ultrasound, so I was told to come back in a month. When I did, I was informed that I had had a false pregnancy. My husband accused me of being so emotional, that I had caused a positive test.
I never told my mother, because she felt the same crazy dedication to my ex as she did for my sister.
Now, for the first time, I realized that she knew what I had been through.
“Well baby”, she said, “life is funny, what's taken away from us, is always given back.”
Now I knew that she was talking about me and not my sister.
“What you saying, Mom?” I braced myself for the response.
What followed was a long statement that was disguised as a question.
“You think you can take your sister's children for a while? 'Cause if you don't, child protective services are gong to take them away. And you know that no matter how hard it was on me when you were coming up, ain't none of y'all got taken or sent away from me.
So I know you gonna do the right thing 'cause it's in you to do. Plus, if you been seeing Aunt T, well then you need love, and I know for a fact that the best way to get love is to give it.”
I knew that there was no way out. My mother was right and I was too tired to object. The fact of the matter was I could use the distraction. My career as a media consultant was going very well. I owned my own company, and had enough smarter-than-me types to keep things running while I took care of whatever had to be done.
“When do I need to come, Mom?” I heard myself ask.
“How soon can you get here?”
The fifteen hour drive from Chicago to Norfolk Virginia did nothing to prepare me for the mess that would become my new life.
My sister's pregnancy had been kept from me long enough for her to give birth to a bright-eyed baby girl. She'd named her Nia, which means “purpose.” I didn't know if my sister knew that when she chose the name, but someone, somewhere was watching out for this child, this purpose.
I spent exactly twenty-four hours in the state of Virginia. I would have left sooner, but I had to wait for family court to open. I had already talked to my friend Bernita, a lawyer and a real sister.
“It's fine for you to play Mary Poppins for a while, but don't be stupid,” she told me. “Get legal custody of them brats so you can get them on your insurance and into good schools.” I didn't know until later how necessary this advice would be.
When I first laid eyes on the four children, I realized how long it had been since I had last seen them. Robert, the oldest, was now eight. The last time I'd seen him was when he was four and raising everything but heaven. The twins were now five and the newborn really was one. All I could think of was the infamous Butterfly McQueen line, “I don't know nothing 'bout birthing no babies” and I didn't. They piled into my beautiful Mercedes and it was no longer the thing of pride it had once been. It was now a kidmobile. I strapped the infant into the car seat a friend had given me, only to find out after I returned it that I had her in the car backward.
Our first night back in Chicago is what days of therapy are for. I don't know how the children survived. I bundled Nia in an electric blanket hoping to keep her warm. When she ran a fever, I called another friend, who is a doctor, and asked for help. “Calm down and take her out of the blanket,” she told me when I described the child's condition. “You are baking the child.”
When I put Robert in the whirlpool tub, hoping to entertain him with the jets, I was the one in for the show. He opened all of my bath salts and gels, poured them into the water, and created a upstairs full of bubbles.
The twins were no less amusing. Sometime between getting Nia back to a normal tempurature and cleaning up Robert's mess, I got a call from the doorman who said that the children I had dragged in earlier were now going up and down the elevator without a stitch of clothing on. He informed me of this in his “you know we Black folks gotta stick together” tone. I thanked him for the lookout, found the boys and called the one woman that I swore I would not ask for advice: my mother.
“Hey, girl,” she said, laughing. “Woooeee. You should be having a good time by now. The kids all in bed?” Since I was sure she could hear the screaming in the background, but this was her idea of torture.
“No, Mom. They are not in bed. They are right here making a mess of my once beautiful home.” I don't know when I started to cry, but I could hear my mother saying something she must have heard in an old movie.
“Now, there, there,” she said, trying to hold back the laughter.
“Mom, why are you laughing?” I was close to hysteria, which only made my mother laugh harder.
“Well, honey,” she said in a tone that actually dripped with the stuff, “I'm laughing 'cause you getting a taste of what I went through, and what your sister has had to go through.”
“Mom, with all due respect to you and my sister, I don't remember asking for children. I don't remember laying down to make any, and I don't remember anybody asking me what I wanted to do about my sister's mess. This thing was just handed to me. And it was you who did the handing.”
My mother paused long enough for me to realize that I had gone too far. But she didn't say so.
“This is a hard thing that you have to do. But you are not alone. And I wasn't the one who handed this to you.”
Now it was my turn to sit silently. The silence didn't last long. “Girl, this is from God. You've been chosen to bring up them kids. They are special. Just like you.”
My mother hung up the phone and I never got the chance to ask her what she meant. She died that night in her sleep.
I didn't fully comprehend the things my mother said or did until after her passing. “You never miss the water 'til the well runs dry” was one of her favorite sayings. It's a hard thing to realize that after you lose it. It was not until I became a mother that I realized how much I needed her.
There's nothing like a black funeral. You see people that you haven't seen in years. The funeral alway
s becomes more like a reunion of the living. My mother's funeral was packed to capacity. I learned afterward that there were people in the streets. This was no small thing for Ezion Mt. Carmel Baptist Church. It held five thousand people comfortably, so there had to be at least seven thousand crammed inside. I had no idea of my mother's popularity, or of her importance to the community.
She had fed, housed, and clothed half the neighborhood at some time or another. Now I could see where my money had been going. Folks told stories of her generosity and of her ability to see to their needs long before she even asked.
“Lord, your mother was a good woman. She knew more things than them psychic folks claimed to know,” one woman told me through her tears.
“She came to me and said, ‘Etta, that boy of yours is in big trouble, you get him out of town and he will get right, but he needs to get away from here fast.' Now, I kinda knew what she was talking about, cause my boy was always into something, but I didn't want to let on to nobody that I did. I told your mamma that I ain't have no way to get my boy nowhere, and she said that she had already took care of that. She handed me a ticket and some money and told me to see him to the bus station right away.
It was a good thing, too, cause that boy had got mixed up in some drug-dealing stuff. He wasn't selling, but his boys were and it turned out that they stole somebody's money. They all end up dead, but my boy is up North working and going to school at night. She saw all that in a dream. Believe me when I tell you this, there's lot's of folks 'round here who can see, 'cause that's the kind of place that this is, but most of them won't tell you nothing without charging you and they surely wouldn't be giving you nothing to get to your good fortune. Yes Lord, your mamma was a good woman, but you know that. I just wanted to let you know what she meant to me.”
She hugged me and walked of smiling like she knew something that I wasn't privy to.
For days, I got letters and visitors telling of my mother's exploits. While it told me more of the woman she was, it didn't console me. I wanted my mother back. She had left me with a task that seemed to grow with her absence.
My sister didn't bother to come to the funeral. We didn't even know where she was. She just called to say that she wanted to make sure that we knew that mom's ring was supposed to go to her. “Would you like to talk to your children?” I asked her.
“No, I have to go,” she said. “They'll be alright with you. Mom said so.”
Then she was gone.
The children never saw there mother again, and I only saw her to identify her body. But that's a story for another time.
I'm just telling you this right now to let you know that my mother surely did know what she was talking about.
I needed love. But it didn't come in the form of a man, at least not at first. Love for me came from the children I now call my tribe. Before them I had had no idea that love was something you show. I thought it was something that I could get. With them I learned that when you give it, you see it. It's not a feeling at all. My feelings had only led me down the road of loneliness.
I've learned something else, too. That by connecting with the thing you were made for, you open yourself to the gifts of the universe. Why am I telling you this? I think you already know.
FROM Breathing Room
BY PATRICIA ELAM
The café on Connecticut Avenue has dark walls covered with paintings by local artists. The metal tables and matching chairs have a quaint European look. Norma loves the way the windows are positioned so that sunlight has no choice but to lurch through them. The smell of ground coffee beans seems to leak from the wallpaper. Norma breathes it in like fresh air.
There are several customers eating, conversing, and reading the Sunday newspapers, more than Norma anticipated would be here this early. Some are part of a couple or a group, others are alone. A black woman with sagging cheeks and bosom sits on a stool by the window, reading the Bible. Norma watches as steam spirals up from the woman's mug and contemplates how striking a photograph the scene would make. I'm seeing a man and he's white. No. I'm seeing somebody and he happens to be white. She might shoot the photo standing behind and to the right, capturing the black woman unaware, with the light from the window nuzzled against the woman's face. If the woman was someplace more accessible, it would be a perfect shot for her zoom lens. She loves the intimacy a zoom provides. From quite a distance away, she can zero in without having to ask permission, without the subject posing and erasing the truth of the moment.
Norma has been standing near the doorway, where the chime sounds every time someone enters. She decides to hang her coat and uses the pay phone to leave Woody a message at his office. Several weeks ago, she impulsively looked up his home phone number and was both mesmerized and repelled at seeing it there. A reminder of his other life that she's not a part of. When his voice mail picks up now, she says, “It's Norma calling on Sunday. I know you're not there, just wanted to listen to your voice even if it's only a recording. Miss you.” She knows he checks his messages on the weekends, anticipating hearing from her.
Norma selects a table against the wall to wait for Moxie. She sits and absently tucks her turtleneck into the waist of her pants. Looking up, she sees Moxie maneuvering toward the table. Her locks are wrapped with African fabric, and her cheeks appear rouged by the cold. Moxie shivers when she takes the seat across from Norma. “It's really chilly out there. Been here long?”
“Not long. A few minutes. It's more than chilly out,” Norma says.
“Sorry I'm late. Fussing with Zadi.” Moxie removes her coat and scarf and drapes them over the back of her chair.
“What now?”
“That girl makes me crazy sometimes. She doesn't get fired up enough about racial issues that come up at her school. Even though, mind you, I've exposed her since day one to cultural things. But she—I don't know why, just refuses to take a stand, so once again—I'll have to.”
“I know how you agonize about her school, but you made a compromise with James, and you say you're satisfied with the academics. Think back—were you such an activist at her age? Sure she can't handle it without you getting involved?” Norma asks, cautiously. She scoots her chair closer to the table, allowing another patron to get by.
“Norma”—Moxie puts her hand up—“I don't even want to talk about it. You'll tell me you know what private school is like, meaning I don't; you'll side with Zadi and it'll just infuriate me again, so let's order.” She turns in her seat and tries to read the posted menu. “What are you going to have?”
“Wait a minute. You just totally dismissed me in one sentence.”
“Sorry. I get frustrated with that school on so many levels. I told you how I tried to organize a meeting of black parents, so we could check in with each other, compare notes on how the kids are doing. But I think only ten parents showed up out of the already paltry thirty-five or forty black families. Later I heard things like they thought it was going to be a gripe session or something divisive. From black people! Some of those folks act like they came to the school to get away from themselves. I swear—it's such a headache.”
“I'm sure it's not easy for you,” says Norma, opening her purse, somewhat annoyed. “But you have such strict standards.” Woody's a good man. He really is. He's white, but he's a good man.
“Like what?” Moxie listens intently.
“Oh, come on. You know how you are. No one's ever black enough to suit you,” Norma says with a smile. “If it was up to you, you would have me, Zadi, and your dad running around tied up in kente cloth all the time, celebrating Kwanzaa every other month.” Norma laughs, pleased with her half-serious joke, and then busies herself, taking several dollars from her wallet. “I think I'm going to have a vanilla latte. What kind of tea do you want? I'll get yours.”
“‘Tied up in kente cloth.' Norma, you're crazy.” Moxie laughs, too. It's Norma's customary way of digging at her.
“You know what I'm saying is true, Moxie. You know it's your lifelong drea
m to someday be crowned Ms. African American.”
Moxie waves her off. “Leave me alone.” She squints at the sign displaying the coffee shop's offerings. Although she laughed, Moxie knows all too well what it's like to bear the brunt of a racial-Richter-scale judgment. She recalls feeling not black enough for some of the people at Zadi's African-centered preschool. Her gaze lingers on Norma's relaxed hair, cut in a bob with amber hair coloring to disguise the gray strands, a constant reminder of one of the differences they have silently agreed to sidestep for the sake of friendship.
“I was supposed to be ordering—What kind of tea do you want?” Norma asks. “Oh, I'll take that Gypsy Ginger Rose. Why'd they have to call it ‘gypsy'? Why couldn't it be just plain ‘ginger rose'? I mean, is that exoticism or racism?”
“See—you're the crazy one.” Norma is still not as relaxed or ready as she had hoped. She leans forward and changes the subject. “So, Mox, it's a new year, any potential dates or mates on the horizon yet?”
Moxie clears her throat. “I told you. I'm not dealing with that. What—you don't believe me?”
“It was on your wish list last year.”
“Yea, and where did it get me? Entanglements that stressed me out. I need to work on me before I can be involved with anyone. I'm tired of giving myself away to men and getting only half of them, or less, back in return. I don't even want them taking up space on my voice mail. I told the last guy I went out with to call me back after he'd had a year of therapy. He called and I said, ‘Did you start therapy?' And he laughed, and said he didn't think I was serious. I was very serious. He had ‘issues,' as Zadi would say. This year I'm concentrating solely on my family. Understand?” Moxie raises her eyebrows for emphasis.
Gumbo Page 73