You Are Free: Stories

by Danzy Senna

  “And a vanilla milk for Jermajesty? In case he gets hungry?”

  The baby looked too young to drink Starbucks vanilla milk—it was probably for Destiny, the toddler at home—but Lara agreed to it anyway.

  They left Starbucks together and stood on the sidewalk. The baby, still sucking his bottle, squinted out from beneath the mound of blankets, a little elfin yellow face that made Lara’s heart hurt to look at.

  Mandy wrapped her coffee cake in some napkins and put it, with the other items, into her purse. It was still early for a Sunday, a gray autumn morning, and Broadway was as empty as Lara had ever seen it.

  “Good luck with your search for your mother,” Lara said, holding out her hand. “I hope you find her.”

  Mandy took Lara’s hand and clasped it weakly. “Thanks for the Frappuccino and stuff.” She shrugged. “I hope you find your kid, the one you gave away.”

  Lara started to clarify, but Mandy was already moving away, across the wide intersection with her stroller. Lara waited until they were safely inside the bus terminal before she looked away.

  Triptych

  1. CHERRIES IN WINTER

  Andrea smells what’s happening under the table, but she doesn’t say anything. It doesn’t seem appropriate to mention, given the circumstances. Nobody else says a word either. They just eat their food in silence. A new one floats up, and Andrea tries to hold her breath as she takes another bite of turkey. It’s more difficult than she imagined, to eat without breathing.

  Andrea’s mother died yesterday. She died quietly, all drugged up, in a white room surrounded by black nurses. It was a planned death, like a planned pregnancy. Everybody had plenty of time to mourn before the official end. Relatives from both sides have come to town for the funeral, which will be held tomorrow, and the aura at the table now is one of suppressed relief, and impatience for the ceremony to be over.

  The last time Andrea saw her mother was two weeks ago, in the hospice in New Haven. Her breasts were gone and she wore a bandanna on her head, so that she looked like a young boy. So pale, she looked almost see-through. She drifted in and out of awareness, but when she was awake, all she could talk about was cherries: the blood red of them, the sweetness of them, the coolness of them, the pebblelike roundness of the pit rolling over her tongue. Andrea went all around New Haven that cold gray day looking for cherries, but they were out of season, and when she came back to the hospice her mother was not talking about cherries anymore. Her eyes were closed and it was time for Andrea to catch the train back to campus.

  A new smell wafts up from under the table. It’s unbelievable that such a small dog could make such a big impact on the world. Andrea holds a napkin over her mouth and eyes the other guests. They scrape at their plates unhappily.

  “Pass the gravy, Andrea,” her father says, nodding his big head toward the bowl. He looks fatter than he did two weeks ago. The weight sits on his chest, where it’s supposed to be most deadly. She hands him the gravy.

  Aunt Mabel made all the food. She and Uncle Gus drove from Syracuse this morning with a whole trunkload of steamy Tupperware.

  “Have you chosen a major?” Gus asks her from across the table.

  “Fine arts.”

  “Better than crude arts.” He snorts with laughter.

  Andrea just nods and takes another sip of wine.

  Through the window above Gus’s head, she can see it has begun to snow. Soft flakes drift down and make a home on the branches of the apple tree where she used to sit, hiding from the world. She went there for many reasons, but the one she remembers most is her father. Once, it was her runny nose that made him angry. He couldn’t stand the sight of it. He saw it as evidence of stupidity. He came after her holding a car key wrapped in toilet paper. He wanted to pick her nose, but he didn’t want to use his finger, so he’d made this prosthesis. Andrea shrieked and sobbed and squirmed out of his grip, and made it up the apple tree before he could catch her.

  In adulthood, her runny nose had turned into chronic nasal congestion and sinusitis. A wan vegetarian in her dorm suggested she might be allergic to wheat and dairy. Last month she stopped eating either, and her nose is now a clear and easy passageway. She thinks that if her nose were still blocked she wouldn’t be able to smell the stench coming from under the table. Another fart floats up just then, a real doozy. Aunt Mabel coughs into her napkin.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” her father says, rising. His chair falls to the floor behind him. “Where is that damn dog?”

  He reaches under the table and she hears a yelp as Atticus is dragged from his hiding place. Atticus is old, nearly toothless. He was her mother’s dog, a replacement baby for when Andrea got too old to hold, and she used to take him everywhere. Now he sleeps almost all the time. Her father grips the dog by the scruff of his neck and belts him once, twice across the rump. The dog scurries away whimpering, his tail between his legs.

  Her father picks up his fallen chair, looks down at the table, daring anybody to say a word.

  Uncle Gus snorts with laughter. “I thought it was you all that time, Bob.”

  Aunt Mabel laughs a little and everybody goes back to their food.

  Except Andrea. She stares out the window, where the snow is falling harder. When she was a kid, Andrea used to play a game at dinner: She would imagine that she was a passerby on the street out front, somebody who just happened to glance in through their picture window at this dinner scene. She would imagine herself and her family through that stranger’s eyes: a red-faced and bearded fat man at the head of the table, a slightly haggard woman serving food from the kitchen, a pudgy girl with braces feeding scraps to the dog under the table. Would they see this scene and think, Happy Family? The American Dream? Or would they notice the details: the swiftness with which the father belted back his glasses of scotch. How his voice grew louder and more slurred with each course. Would they know just from looking that some nights after dinner, his rage ended with that small woman bloody and bruised and weeping? On those nights, Andrea would lie in the dark, holding her pillow and praying to some faceless Sunday school God that her mother not die yet. She never guessed her mother’s death would come from the inside out—a passing of the most pedestrian and blameless variety.

  Andrea lies in the dark of her bedroom staring at the embers of her teenaged self. A poster of Harrison Ford still hangs above her bed, another of Jennifer Beals from Flashdance beside her dresser mirror. Her stomach makes unhappy sounds. Aunt Mabel’s turkey isn’t sitting well with her, but somehow she drifts off to sleep.

  She wakes sometime later in the darkness to the sound of beeping garbage trucks outside.

  Her mother looked almost beautiful in that hospice bed, androgynous and tiny, translucent. The last thing she said to Andrea: “What I wouldn’t do for a nice cold bowl of cherries.”

  Andrea gets up and goes to the bathroom off the hall with the puffy pink toilet seat that makes a sighing noise when she sits down on it. It’s only 4:30 a.m. She heads back to her room but instead of getting back into bed she dresses in the dark, then goes outside and sits in her father’s Chevy with the motor running, letting it warm up before she rolls slowly out of the driveway.

  Connecticut is an embalmed state. The houses sit like taxidermy, their marble eyes watching her as she cruises past. The Star Market is open, although the parking lot is empty. She doesn’t know if it’s been open all night or has just now opened for the morning. A man stands behind a table, under a sign that says ENSURE: COMPLETE, BALANCED NUTRITION FOR A HEALTHIER YOU. Behind him is a sculpture of bottles with the same words on them. When she moves past, he holds up a Dixie cup with white fluid in it. It reminds her of the hospital, the fluids that flowed in and out of her mother. “Would you like to try Ensure?” She shakes her head and moves on toward the produce department.

  The fruit is piled neatly, identical apples and identical pears, not a mark on their waxy skins. There are cherries too, imported from Peru, at $5.99 a pound. She fills a bag
until it can’t hold any more.

  Outside, the sky has begun to brighten. She sits in the Chevy with the motor running, eating the cherries. They don’t taste very sweet. They are dry, rubbery things, and after a few tries, she sets them on the seat next to her.

  She remembers that afternoon so many years ago, when her mother came home to find Andrea perched in the tree, still hiding from her father. Her mother put her hands on her hips and laughed at the sight. “Is that a monkey up there?” she called up. “Come on down, sweetie pie, I need your help.”

  That evening, Andrea sat at the kitchen table and snapped green beans and watched her mother move around, cooking dinner and humming along with Billie Holiday on the radio. Or maybe it was Johnny Cash, she isn’t sure. As she thinks about it, she isn’t sure about any of the details. She can’t remember what her mother was wearing, whether she was thin or fat, how she wore her hair, in a bun or down around her face. She can’t remember what her mother looked like before the illness. Hard as she tries, she can’t conjure up her face. It’s slipping away already. She knows there will come a day when she doesn’t miss her mother anymore—a day when she only misses the feeling of missing. But she’s not there yet. She still feels something of the dead hovering inside of her. It lives for a moment in her chest, misshapen and bruised as a backyard fruit. She closes her eyes and lets it hang inside of her. Then it falls away, too heavy to hold. She starts up the engine and heads on toward home.

  2 . PEACHES IN WINTER

  Yvette smells what’s happening under the table, but she doesn’t say anything. It doesn’t seem appropriate to mention, given the circumstances. Nobody else says a word either. They just eat their food in silence. A new one floats up, and Yvette tries to hold her breath as she takes another bite of chicken. It’s more difficult than she imagined, to eat without breathing.

  Yvette’s mother died yesterday. She died quietly, all drugged up, in a white room surrounded by a bevy of nurses from the Islands. It was a planned death, like a planned pregnancy. Everybody had plenty of time to mourn before the official end. Relatives from both sides have come to town for the funeral, which will be held tomorrow, and the aura at the table now is one of suppressed relief, and impatience for the ceremony to be over.

  The last time Yvette saw her mother was two weeks ago in the hospice in New Haven. Her breasts were gone and she wore a kerchief on her head, so that she looked like a young boy. Her skin seemed to grow darker the closer she got to the other side, as if she was turning to wood before Yvette’s very eyes. She drifted in and out of awareness, but when she was awake, all she could talk about was peaches: the swirling blush of them, the sweetness of them, the coolness of them, the roughness of the pit against her tongue. Yvette went all around New Haven that cold gray day looking for peaches, but they were out of season and when she came back to the hospice her mother was not talking about peaches anymore. Her eyes were closed and it was time to catch the bus back to campus.

  A new smell wafts up from under the table. It’s unbelievable that such a small dog could make such a big impact on the world. Yvette holds a napkin over her mouth and eyes the other guests. They scrape at their plates unhappily.

  “Pass the yams, Yvette,” her father says, nodding his big head toward the bowl. He looks fatter than he did two weeks ago. The weight sits on his chest, where it’s supposed to be most deadly. She hands him the yams.

  Aunt Grace made all the food. She and Uncle Byron drove all the way up from the city this morning with a whole trunkload of steamy Tupperware.

  “Have you chosen a major?” Byron asks her from across the table.

  “English. Literature.”

  “Uh-oh, you know what that means, James,” he says. “She’ll be moving back home after graduation.” He snorts with laughter. “All these liberal arts kids do nowadays.”

  The thought of moving back here after college has filled her mouth with the taste of metal. She takes a sip of sweet tea, trying to wash it away.

  Through the window above Byron’s head, she can see it has begun to snow. Soft flakes drift down and make a home on the branches of the oak tree where she used to sit, hiding from the world. She went there for many reasons, but the one she remembers most is her father. Once it was the pig’s feet that made him angry. He had decided she was too skinny, had become obsessed with this fact, and on one of the nights her mother was working late, he had fixed pig’s feet for her dinner. She grew nauseated by its smell before it even hit the plate, and refused to eat. While he hovered over her, she’d taken a first bite, then gagged and spit it out. He tried to force the same half-chewed piece back into her mouth but she squirmed out of his grip and ran outside. She made it up the oak tree before he could catch her.

  Another fart floats up just then, a real doozy. Aunt Grace coughs into her napkin.

  “Goddamn it,” her father says, rising. His chair falls to the floor behind him. “Where is that fucking dog?”

  He reaches under the table and she hears a yelp as Teddy is dragged from his hiding place. Teddy is old, nearly toothless. Named for Teddy Pendergrass, he was her mother’s dog, a replacement baby for when Yvette got too old to hold, and she used to take him everywhere. Now he sleeps almost all the time. Her father grips the dog by the scruff of his neck and belts him once, twice across his rump. The dog scurries away whimpering, his tail between his legs.

  Her father picks up his fallen chair, looks down at the table, daring anybody to say a word.

  Byron snorts with laughter. “I thought it was you all that time, James.”

  Aunt Grace chuckles a little and everybody goes back to their food.

  Except Yvette. She stares out the window, where the snow is falling harder. When she was a kid, Yvette used to play a game at dinner: She would imagine she was a passerby on the street out front, somebody who just happened to glance in through their picture window at this dinner scene. She would imagine herself and her family through that stranger’s eyes: a bespectacled, light-skinned man with a goatee, a slim, nervous brown-skinned woman serving food, a pudgy preteen girl in cornrows feeding scraps to the dog under the table. Would they see this scene and think, Happy Family? The American Dream? Would they see this scene as evidence of progress? Would they think, how wonderful, a black family living in this neighborhood? Or would they understand that the father, the good doctor, wore two faces. A healer by day could become cruel by night, wounding with the scotch flowing through his veins. Would they know just from looking that some nights after dinner, his tirades ended with her mother weeping, wishing aloud that she was dead? He never struck her with his fist, but he didn’t have to. He was a genius at finding the right words to make her wish she’d never been born. On those nights, Yvette would lie in the dark, holding her pillow and praying to some faceless preacher God that her mother not die at her own hand. She never guessed her mother’s death would come from the inside out—a passing of the most pedestrian and blameless variety.

  Yvette lies in the dark of her bedroom staring at the embers of her teenaged self. A poster of Michael Jackson still hangs above her bed, another of Jennifer Beals from Flashdance beside her dresser mirror. Her stomach makes unhappy sounds. Grace’s chicken isn’t sitting well with her, but somehow she drifts off to sleep.

  She wakes sometime later in the darkness, to the sound of beeping garbage trucks outside.

  Her mother looked almost beautiful in that hospice bed, androgynous and tiny, like a dark, fragile doll imported from a distant land. The last thing she said to Yvette: “What I wouldn’t do for a peach.”

  Yvette gets up and goes to the bathroom off the hall with the framed sign on the wall that reads GOD BLESS THIS HOME. It’s only 4:45 a.m. She heads back to her room, but instead of getting into bed she dresses in the dark, then goes outside and sits in her father’s Volvo with the motor running, letting it warm up before she rolls slowly out of the driveway.

  Connecticut is an embalmed state. The houses sit like taxidermy, their marble eyes wat
ching her as she cruises past. The Stop & Shop is open, although the parking lot is empty. She doesn’t know if it’s been open all night or has just now opened for the morning. A man stands behind a table, under a sign that says ENSURE: COMPLETE, BALANCED NUTRITION FOR A HEALTHIER YOU. Behind him is a sculpture of bottles with the same words on them. When she moves past, he holds up a Dixie cup with white fluid in it. “Want some?” She takes the cup and sips from it. The drink tastes like chalk. It reminds her of the hospice, the fluids that flowed in and out of her mother. She hands it back, wipes her lip, and moves on toward the produce department.

  The fruit is piled neatly, identical apples and identical pears, not a mark on their waxy skins. There are peaches too, imported from Chile at $2.99 a pound. She fills a bag with five of the heaviest, ripest ones she can find.

  Outside, the sky has begun to brighten. She sits in the Volvo with the motor running, holding a peach. It’s perfectly round and perfectly soft, but when she takes a bite, it doesn’t taste sweet. It is a mealy, tasteless thing, and after a few nibbles, she sets it on the seat next to her.

  She remembers that afternoon so many years ago, when her mother came home to find Yvette perched in the tree, still hiding from her father and his pig’s feet. Her mother put her hands on her hips and laughed at the sight. “Is that a monkey I see up there?” she called up. “Come on down, sugar, I need your help.”

  That evening, Yvette sat at the kitchen table and shucked corn and watched her mother move around, cooking food Yvette wanted to eat and humming along with Stephanie Mills on the radio. Or maybe it was Patsy Cline. She isn’t sure. As she thinks about it, she isn’t sure about any of the details. She can’t remember what her mother was wearing, whether she was thin or fat, how she wore her hair, in an Afro or braids. She can’t remember what her mother looked like before the illness. Hard as she tries, she can’t conjure up her face. It’s slipping away already. She knows there will come a day when she doesn’t miss her mother anymore—a day when she only misses the feeling of missing. But she’s not there yet. She still feels something of the dead hovering inside of her. It lives for a moment in her chest, misshapen and bruised as a backyard fruit. She closes her eyes and lets it hang inside of her. Then it falls away, too heavy to hold. She starts up the engine and heads on toward home.