“Of course her grown children fought their relatives for the money. Not for Wynona, but for themselves. All but the same one, the son who had never asked for much and didn’t have much. He didn’t come home often because he thought he had nothing to bring. He didn’t know his love would have been enough. He kept tryin to talk to her alone. ‘Ma, let’s go look at houses for you.’ Or ‘Ma, put some money away. Hide it.’ But the other relatives who happened to hear him thought he had some hidden motive and kept comin between them. Then her other children began to lie on him and his ‘secret plans.’ Wynona was speechless. And gettin broke. Fifty thousand dollars is NOT that much money when you have twenty-five thousand relatives askin for some.
“Wynona came to my house wakin me up several mornins. I was always dead tired of always workin and still bein always broke. But she is my friend and needed to talk. She was a nervous wreck from her relatives and Betha screamin across the street. She couldn’t half sleep because someone was always tappin her shoulder while she was tryin to sleep so they could whisper to her, alone, together.
“I was still half asleep, but I told her, ‘Don’t forget what you have been through. Seem to me you the only one who can really love you and see to your future. So you got to have sense enough to watch your money. So do it. Don’t ask me, don’t ask nobody. Don’t you know what you need? What you want? You have been tellin me for twenty years! Now, do it. Think. That sure is what I been doin lately. I been lookin at your life and my own life. And my children. Think.’ ”
That is what Vinnie was doing: thinking. Just things running across her mind. Money. Finally Fred . . . and love. “Ain’t no money in my life and there ain’t no love in it either. I’m all the time worryin about money and bills and children. Grown children. My house is goin down. I’m goin down. I’m gettin old and there ain’t no romance in my life. But I ain’t old! I’m tired of supportin kids that don’t never ask me how I’m doin. Don’t ask me do I need anything. They never say, ‘Mama, let one of them jobs go and just rest a little more. Do somethin for yourself.’ ”
Still, Vinnie went out and bought the money orders for some new cymbals for Richard’s drums; “I believe I can get this great job, Ma. I just need these new cymbals to make sure of it! I’ve got to be able to live, Ma.”
She sent money for Delores to get a new cashmere sweater set. “I just have to have them, Ma, because I belong to this sorority and all the girls have one or even three sets. So there. See, I am not asking for two or three sets, just one set. I am the last girl to ever get anything, blah, blah, blah. I need a new coat, too. Coats are beige this year, Ma. I’ll be the last one for that too, I guess. I will just have to go round in last year’s black coat. I don’t know how I can live on what you send me. It’s very hard, Ma.”
Vinnie sent the hard-earned money orders to Richard and Delores, but this time she wrote a little extra on her letter to each of them. Said, “You need to think about getting a job of your own for all these little extras you can’t live without, because it’s me that can hardly live.” She was thinking hard now, about her own life.
In the meantime, one day when it was raining Betha sat her mother out on that screen porch on that rickety, one-board-back chair, just cursing her all the while. She gave the old mother a blackened banana and a dirty rinsed-out glass of water, just cussin all the while.
Wynona can sure tell you this.
“Now Betha was a big ole, strong woman. Husky like a man. And though everybody wanted to tell her off about the way she treated her mother, everybody was scared of her. But on this morning, letters to her children in her hand, Vinnie hesitated by her little car, then took a deep breath and walked across the street to Betha’s house. Well, it was Ms. Foster’s house because it was her check that paid the rent, but wasn’t nobody gonna argue with Betha bout that.
“Vinnie stood outside speaking to Ms. Foster through the screen when Betha came out, smiling at Vinnie. Vinnie took another deep breath and asked her, said, ‘Betha? How come you talk to your mother like you do?’ Betha tilted her head as the smile became dimmer. Vinnie kept talkin to her, ‘This is your mother. No matter what she might have done, she don’t deserve to be all them names you call her. And she don’t deserve to hear all those terrible, dirty words you say.’
“Betha stepped up to the screen door and opened it. Smile all gone now. Said, ‘Ain’t no G.D. nobody gonna tell me how to talk to my own mama! Not you, not nobody!’
“Every neighbor who was awake, their shades flew up with them lookin out, cause, you see, Betha’s voice really carried.
“Vinnie didn’t step back, just kept talkin, gently. ‘Betha, your mother gave birth to you or you wouldn’t be here. She loved you enough to raise you. Feed you. She bought and changed your diapers and clothes. Musta kept you from harm’s way because here you are just as strong as you can be.’
“Betha raised her arm and opened the mouth that was in the middle of her terrible, angry-mad face.
“Vinnie raised her little hand up to stop her. Betha stopped! And Vinnie kept talkin, ‘It hurts me, it hurts everybody, to hear you talk to her like you do, so I know it hurts your mother. And she is a old lady . . . so there is nothing she can do to you about it. That’s why I thought I might mention it to you, what you are doin to your own mother.’
“Lord! As Betha stepped down the short steps toward Vinnie, she shouted, ‘Ain’t nothin you can do bout it either, woman! So you best get on out my yard and MY bizness! This is MY mother! This is MY bizness!’
“Vinnie stood still a moment, then nodded as she turned to leave, saying, ‘You’re right. I just thought I had to say somethin and remind you she is your mother and we don’t get but one. And yours ain’t got long to be here on this earth. She is already sick and you are hurryin her on away from here. And when she is gone, God bless her, you are goin to miss her and wish for a chance to say somethin nice to her. And show her your love. Cause you do love her, you know. You have just done forgot.’
“Betha opened her mouth again, but nothin came out.
“Vinnie started walkin back across the street. I know she wanted to run, but she didn’t speed up either. I would have flown, me. But Vinnie just went to her car, got in and drove on off to her daily slavery for her kids.”
But, Vinnie was thinking. “I am a mother. Suppose, one day, I have to depend on my own children? I don’t have no reason or proof to think I wouldn’t be treated the same way Mrs. Foster is because I might be a burden and a bother to them. My life would be in their hands because I might be helpless to help my own self!”
She thought about Fred . . . because she didn’t have any real life, even now, when her life was supposed to be in her own hands. She jumped in her little car, tossing the two envelopes containing the money orders onto the empty seat next to her, and passed on by the mailbox without looking at it. “I want to think about this some more.” And she thought some more about Fred, too.
As it happened Fred showed a house or two that day to a newlywed couple and he was thinking about Vinnie also. About her gentleness and those round muscles in the calves of her legs. Her smile, her low laughter. Her lovin ways. He had heard about Vinnie and Betha and was frightened for, but proud of, Vinnie. That was the day he called the telephone company to arrange for a telephone for Vinnie in his name. “I will pay for the phone and pay her to make a few follow-up real estate calls for me from her house. That way I can keep up with her at the same time I’ll pay her so she can quit one of those part-time jobs . . . and rest some.” That is what he did.
Josephine, looking through her window at Fred coming and going a bit from Vinnie’s house, said, “What is he doing always over there at her house? He is up to no good. But he won’t get nothing because she don’t have nothing.”
Wynona was glad to see Fred around Vinnie a bit. “He a nice man and she needs one.”
In the other meantime, Wynona was going around in circles. Distraught and confused. Her good son had had to leave to get
back to his job so she had no true support she was kin to and could count on any longer. All the others still in her house just wanted her money.
“What am I gonna do?” she asked Vinnie.
“Tell em you’re broke!” answered Vinnie.
“They won’t blive me!”
Vinnie looked at Wynona like she was crazy and asked, “Who cares what they believe? It’s your bizness.”
Wynona’s sisters each left with a couple of thousand dollars. “For Mama’s sake,” they said through their smiles. Her two other children left with five thousand dollars each. “For our future.” But they complained she could have done more; “I need . . . I need . . . I need.”
Vinnie was a little angry with her. “You need, too! Have you talked to anybody about that house you want?”
“No. Ain’t had time.”
“Take time! It’s your life!”
Later Wynona did speak to Fred about finding her a house.
Josephine spoke to Vinnie about Wynona, too. “What’s going on with that fool Wynona? She gonna give all that money away? She is a sure-nough fool!”
“This time, Mrs. Smart Josephine is almost right,” thought Vinnie.
It wasn’t but a day or two later that Vinnie came out of her house with Wynona, and Betha came out of her house at the same time. When Betha saw Vinnie she commenced to run across the street toward her. Vinnie froze in her tracks, thinking “Oh, shit!” But she stood her ground, didn’t run back into her house or jump in her car, which is what she wanted to do. She was scared though. Wynona just gasped and held her breath, thinking, “Lord, I have to help my friend. I guess we both gonna get whipped today.”
When Betha got to Vinnie she raised both of her ham-bone arms and threw them around Vinnie and hugged her. Hugged her! Vinnie was surprised, astonished, relieved and grateful.
With a great big smile on her plump face, Betha said, “You was right! I love you! You a good woman! She is my mama and I sure do love her!” Then they hugged and all that. But it wasn’t long before Betha had a fight with one of her boy-friends, Dick or somebody, and they broke that record player and Betha went back to cussing her mother again.
Vinnie mused over it. “But, well, what you gonna do about somebody’s else’s life? Maybe it just comes from being poor and not having nothing or just seeing everybody havin everything on television and you still always having nothing.” Then she would sit in her window and look for her eagle. The eagle gave her something; she couldn’t put it in words, but the eagle gave her something.
Finally, Wynona’s last family got all they were going to get and they left with the words “I’m broke . . . I’m broke from comin down to your house here to see bout you!” ringing in Wynona’s ears. Some who had arrived late and weren’t close family didn’t get anything. They left mumbling to each other, “Stingy dog! She too cheap and tight for me. She sure gonna have some bad luck from the way she act to me. And she need not call on me for help cause I ain’t got no time for somebody won’t help nobody. Specially her own blood!” They left belching with their full bellies and rested backs from their stay in a decent clean room at the motel where they had slept on clean sheets and used fresh towels Wynona had paid for. Don’t tell me anything about some people. Just tell me what you gonna do about life and the way people are?
Wynona was so glad when the last relative was gone, her tears dried up and her teeth, the few good ones she had, shone again in her smile. That is when Vinnie told her, “One thing you could have done is get your teeth fixed.”
Wynona smiled behind her hand. “I can still do that.”
“How? You said you were broke. You have let your relatives talk you out of all that money and you may never get your hands on that kind of money again in a big chunk like that. Chile, you were blessed. And now . . . all that money gone. And you still need a house. That one over there you living in is gonna fall down on you cause your landlord isn’t going to never do no real fixin-up on it.”
Wynona still sat smiling behind her hand. “Well . . . I got a secret.”
“What kind of secret?”
“I hid some of my money from me and everybody.”
“Hid it? Where did you hide it in that little house full of your relatives?”
Wynona removed her hand in her excitement. “Well, you know my dog? Bozo? Well, he keeps a pile of dried-up doodoo right just side of his doghouse. Everybody always was complainin bout the smell and the flies. Well, I don’t smell it much cause I love him and I keep it cleaned up when I have time and don’t have so much company. They was all complainin, but didn’t nobody go out there to clean it up. I was always cookin them some food or goin to the store to buy it, or washin dishes and their clothes. My ole washin machine like to blew its rollers off! cause they want to wash every little thing stead of wait for a big load and they didn’t want to mix up their clothes with the other relatives’ germs. We washed nearly every day, well, I did, til I told them the machine was breakin down and they had to go to the launderette. They didn’t want to spend their own money so some of them wore their clothes longer. My sisters rinsed theirs out in the tub.”
“What’s that got to do with your secret?” Vinnie smiled at her.
“Just that they always want to see my bankbook. I know they looked for it. I had to keep changin where I hid it. And I truly wanted them ALL to go and I know they ain’t goin til I’m broke. So while I was actin like I was cleanin round my dog Bozo’s house I had a big thought. Right away I told them I had to go to the store. I got a minute alone and dug down deep up under some things and got my bankbook and left like I was goin to the store, but instead I went to the bank. Didn’t have but about thirty thousand dollars left and hadn’t done nothin for myself, girl. Nothin! And I was plumb worn out from givin and doin things for them and I knew I might never see my sisters and children again if I didn’t give em somethin.”
Vinnie heard herself saying, “They are not children anymore. They are grown.”
Wynona gave her a special look to remind her of her own kids. Then she went on speaking, “After I went to the store, cause I had to bring somethin home with me, I went to the bank and took all my money out cept for one thousand dollars cause I got to keep lottery-ticket-playin money.”
Vinnie gasped as she thought of that money in the house with all Wynona’s relatives.
Wynona spoke on, “Girl, I was so nervous you can’t magine it nor blive it either. My knees shook and what few teeth I got rattled with twenty-nine thousand dollars in cash wrapped up in my apron stuck in a grocery bag hangin at the end of my arm. At first I thought of them people what snatch purses and I pulled that bag up to my chest and let my purse hang off my arm cause it was empty.”
“Lord, have mercy, Wynona!”
Wynona smiled sadly as she continued. “When I got home I took some stuff out the grocery bag, waitin. I planned ahead and I had some spray and stuff I said I was gonna fix that dog-doogie pile with so they could breathe better, and I went out there with my grocery bag and sprays and my shovel and rake. I knew they wasn’t watchin and they wouldn’t come out cause I might ask for some help. I raked a spot and dug a right smart place down deep. It look like I was goin to bury that dog poop, but I buried that twenty-five thousand cash dollars instead. It was wrapped tight by then and I covered it with some of the freshest poop and some ole poop too and I knew that money was safe.”
“Well! I’ll be doggoned!”
Wynona laughed, “So was my money! Yes, I sure did! And I ‘accidently’ left my bankbook out after I finished givin my sisters a few thousand each: my kids already had theirs. After the rest of em saw that bankbook and tried to set their mouth to ask for some of that little one thousand dollars, I got mad. But I didn’t say nothin . . . cause they my relatives and they family and I love em, but I decided then I would get sick and have to go to bed and be taken care of by them.”
“Lord, have mercy! Please.”
“So the next morning over the stove cookin som
e breakfast for them four or five what was still left, I just fell backwards onto the floor, holdin on to my chest where my heart is.”
“Oh, Wynona. Poor dear.”
“My children was gone, my sisters was packin. Them few holdin on carried me to my bed, feelin and pattin on me as they carried me, to see was I hidin any extra money on me. I was sad, mad and just through, but I let em cause I had the sweet smell of Bozo’s poop on my mind. I don’t know who called the doctor, but he went to actin like I need to go to the hospital; make him some money too, I guess. But I opened one eye and told him, ‘Listen, Doctor, I’m just tired. You just order me some rest and quiet and twenty-four-hour care and I will pay you for this visit soon as everybody is gone and I can get up.’ He caught on right quick and did what I tole him. And when you came over and everybody was talkin bout havin to leave and you said you would look out for me, they almost flew on way from here. You was very kind.”
Vinnie laughed happily, “You were very smart! Now, I’m gonna call Fred and you go see if the worms are eatin that money. And it’s gonna rain again, too. Go put it back in the bank for your own self’s house and home, chile, and some teeth. Then maybe you can court again someday!”
They laughed and hugged. Friends.
Wynona went home to check her money.
In the beginning Josephine knew about the money and scoffed at Wynona. “She isn’t gonna have that money long enough to buy a slop jar, which I know she needs! Lottery store gonna get it all back!” She ridiculed Wynona’s relatives, too. “People always show up when they smell money! She a fool to let them in, cause all her family are poor as church rats and you know, they poor! The church gonna be after her, too! That fool won’t have a dime in a week. I give her a week! Maybe! She don’t ask my advice and I could tell her something because I am her friend. She ought to buy that house she been renting from me! Do something good for herself!”
The Future Has a Past Page 15