Searching my brain for any pictures of my own mama with a crown on her head, I finally remembered the picture of her holding a baton in Nana’s yellow scrapbook. “My mama was a majorette.”
Before the last syllable finished coming out of my mouth, Mary Madonna yelled, “Your mama was no such thing.”
“Nana’s got a picture of her.”
Mary Madonna had her hands on the side of her hips. “Well, she must’ve been dressed up for Halloween, ’cause your mama’s never been nothing but trouble.”
“Shut up, Mary Madonna,” Mac shouted.
“Well, it’s the truth. Nobody would pick something like her to be a majorette. All she used to do in school was act trashy. Smoking cigarettes and chasing boys.”
“Shut your lying mouth.”
“That’s how come you don’t even know who your daddy is. She didn’t know which one to pick.”
Wanting to knock that shiny crown right off her head, I turned but realized she was too high above me. Mary Madonna’s nose flared as she looked down at me. She smiled and adjusted her sash. “If I don’t tell you, who will?”
I wanted the engine to drown her words in the roar. “Shut up!”
“Mama’s right, you been babied too much. Birthday or no birthday, you need to hear this.”
Mac turned towards Mary Madonna. “Stop it, Mary Madonna. I mean it.”
Her words were almost as loud as the roar of the engine. “It’s just the truth. Everybody knows it except him.”
When Mac turned around to stare Mary Madonna into submission, I spotted his blue sneaker on the accelerator. Before he could push me away, my foot reached over and slammed Mac’s shoe. The gas pedal sunk towards the metal floorboard. Our heads jerked and the go-cart lurched forward. At the same time, the make-believe float disconnected from its hook.
“Ma-ma-a-a!” Mary Madonna screamed. The cart flew past us with a mind of its own, past the tool shed, past the back porch, and right into the side of the hog pen.
Mary Madonna screamed and ducked her head as the cart slammed into a fence board. Hogs scattered, and Mary Madonna flew through the fence gap, landing crown first in murky hog doo-doo.
Aunt Loraine screamed and jumped from Nana’s back porch. Nana followed, and her look of terror made me realize that I would get a whipping.
After Mary Madonna was hosed down and checked for bruises, the real excitement began. “What happened here?” Aunt Loraine demanded. “I mean it. I’m not budging until we find out.”
“Now, honey, it was just an accident. Those kids ought not to’ve been pulling that cart to start with,” Uncle Cecil said.
“It wasn’t no accident neither,” Mary Madonna screamed and buried her wet face in Aunt Loraine’s miniskirt. “He did it.” Her finger seemed longer than an elephant’s nose as it sought me out for punishment.
Moving backwards, I felt my throat close up. “I…didn’t…”
Aunt Loraine threw her arms in the air. “Why, I should’ve known.”
“Now, hold on,” Nana said. “Brandon, did you do this?”
“I…uh…she was…” Watching Aunt Loraine’s nose grow red and her eyes twitch, I wanted to run down the driveway and keep on going. The vision of an orphanage with crying babies hanging out of the window flashed through my mind.
“Brandon didn’t do nothing,” Mac said. “It was me. I hit the gas too hard is all. It was like Daddy said. An accident.”
Mary Madonna threw her head back and cried even harder. “Nuh-huh. He’s telling a story.”
Uncle Cecil molded the brim of his cap. Looking into his eyes, I always thought of Mama. They were shaped in that slanted way like hers, and I figured it was the only way they were alike. “We can stand here to midnight bickering over this. Now look, she’s not hurt. It was just an accident, Loraine.”
“Cecil’s right,” Nana said. “They had no business pulling that trailer to start with.”
The screeching from a tree limb as it rubbed against the tin roof was the only sound I heard. Aunt Loraine stared at me until finally she was forced to blink. Soon the big fake smile that I figured she’d learned from her days as the queen returned. “Accidents will happen, won’t they, Brandon? Even on birthdays.”
After Mary Madonna landed in the hog pen things changed. Aunt Loraine halfway agreed it was an accident, but I knew she blamed me. Her eyes would search me up and down while I stood on the wrought-iron trailer steps. I could read the blame as she pursed her lips together and sighed whenever I sought Mac. “He’s busy doing homework,” she’d say and close the vinyl door.
Though I hungered to run along the creek bank with Mac or swing with him on the tire swing, I knew it was for the best. I had caused him trouble, trouble he didn’t even deserve.
Drinking the usual after-school Pepsi, I sat at the kitchen table and spelled all the words Nana called out from the book with a bee on the cover. I hated the baby way the bee was drawn with a big smile on his face and two wide eyes. Staring out at the old Chevrolet propped up on blocks, I mapped out the lonesome journey I would take on a wild safari, all the while sounding out words like “handsome” and “homecoming.”
Sitting inside the rusty car, I ran my hand over the navy seats envisioning that my touch made the torn leather covers completely whole and brand-new again. Keeping one hand on the thin metal steering wheel, I watched the African roads before me and turned every so often to see Nana pruning the big fern that rested on the porch rail. Her humming rang out and suddenly what she meant to be “Shall We Gather at the River” became the chant of some undiscovered ancient tribe. Just when I swerved to miss an elephant, I heard the roar. Not a roar like Poppy’s tractor, but louder. A roar louder than even a lion.
Nana covered her brow and squinted to make out the noise. Turning to look over my shoulder, I heard the roar make its way around the bend in the driveway. And right past the crepe myrtle, the beat-up car with the blue door appeared. Frozen, all I could do was hit my leg to make sure what I was hearing and seeing was not a dream. But no matter how hard I tried, the roar and final sputter of the muffler would not go away. Never before had I wanted so bad to jump up and find a wet sheet and Nana’s halo of long, wavy white hair standing guard at my bedroom door.
Watching Nana, I wanted to yell. To warn her that the visitor was not a new insurance man making his route. It was the collector, coming to get what was hers. But I did nothing but sit while cool sweat trickled down the back of my neck.
Her hair was black again and, seeing her stand at the car’s blue door, I noticed she was skinnier than before. She wore the same big white sunglasses and waited so long before speaking that I hoped against hope that she was just a hippie passing by seeking a handout.
“Hey,” my mama said. She eased forward the same way I had eased backward the time I saw the rattlesnake drift across the driveway.
Nana turned her back and continued pruning the fern just like the roar was some sort of thunderstorm that had passed over. Nana casually turned her head and looked right at me. Seeing that wrinkled brow was like reading some kind of secret code, and I slid down the seat until my eyes were even with the rusted piece of metal that was once a door lock.
My mama’s voice cracked when she first began. “Now, I know what you’re thinking. And yeah, I did wrong. I know it, Mama, but I changed this time. I really have.”
Nana continued to cut the fern. “Only thing I see changed is your hair.”
Mama sort of laughed and ran her hand through the short hair. “Yeah, I went back to black. Blonde just always was…”
“Trashy,” Nana said and stripped away another leaf.
Mama raised her hands towards the sky and sighed. “Yeah, well. How’s Brandon?”
My hand reached for the door handle, and I fought ripping that door right off its hinge and cussing her out. I’d pretend like I was somebody mean and hateful like Aunt Loraine and yell things like, “Go on, trash,” until she cried real hard and begged forgiveness. Then rem
embering that she had promised to come back and get me when things got better, I let go of the handle. Maybe she was keeping her word. I pictured a big house up in Canada. A two-story house like all the popular kids at school had.
“You don’t need to worry about him,” Nana said.
“Well, he’s my son, okay. I mean I can’t help…”
Nana turned to face my mama and shook the pruning scissors.
“The Lord gave you a good kid, but you sure didn’t do right by him.”
“Damn it, Mama. I didn’t come here to fight, okay.”
“Sophie, that’s the problem. You never cared enough to fight for the boy when you had the chance.” Mama put her hands on her hips and stood on the porch step.
“What the hell does that suppose to mean?”
“Listen to me. Your Daddy and me spent many a night with Brandon. Nights working out all the demons your way of living planted in him. Mending all the scars you and your sorry men left on him.”
“Scars? I never laid a hand on my boy.”
“You didn’t have to. You let everybody else beat on him!” Nana raised the scissors up in the air. “When I think of all the mess that boy’s been through. No, no you’re not about to see him. That’s it now.”
Mama stepped backwards, and only then did Nana put the scissors down on the porch railing.
“Well, aren’t you Miss Fine Christian Lady with her long glorious hair. I guess you’re telling me I’m not good enough for second chances, huh?”
“You know better. Every time we bailed you out of one mess, you’d go fall right back into another. My only regret is that the woman down at social services didn’t pay me any attention when I told her to come take Brandon out the first time.”
“Listen, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. That’s all changed. Really, this ain’t the same Sophie you’re talking to.” My mama’s wrist fell limp like she was telling town gossip. “See, I went through one of those rehabs up in Canada. Learned I could either be pitiful or powerful.” Mama smiled real big like I pictured them teaching her at that place up in Canada.
“And you with no money.” Nana shook her head. “Lord, you expect me to believe this foolishness?”
“The government paid for it. Everybody gets it up there. And, besides, I met a man…”
“Well, sir, how did I know that was coming.”
“Mama, this is different. He’s a widower. Got plenty of money. Walter, that’s his name. He wants us to get married and everything. He’s even gonna open up a beauty shop for me to run.”
“Sophie, you beat all. After not hearing a word from you in over a year, you just roll in here wanting him back like nothing out of the ordinary. I declare, if you weren’t so pitiful, you’d be a regular Lucille Ball.” Nana hadn’t yet closed the screen door before Mama fired the last shot.
“Mama, don’t you force me to do anything. He’s still my boy, okay. Any court will tell you so.”
Nana flew out the door and down the steps faster than I had ever seen her move. Before I could blink, Nana landed her hand against the side of Mama’s face. I flinched at the pop that was louder than the firecrackers Mac and I had lit last Fourth of July.
Mama stumbled, still touching the injured cheek. “Bitch!”
The beat-up car’s engine turned over and over, and just when I feared the fighting was not going to end, Mama drove off in a spray of sand, covering Nana’s prized fern.
Watching Nana clutch her apron and half skip to the back of the house yelling, “A.B., A.B., where are you at?” I laid down in the car seat and thought for a second that, if I was real still, maybe I could hide forever.
A blue jay landed on the dogwood branch that dipped down to the old Chevrolet. In a flutter of wings the bird turned his head down towards me. His tiny eyes seemed to be looking right into the fearful parts. But his peaceful stare failed to trick me. I had seen the signs of trouble before.
If anybody had joined us for supper that night, they never would’ve believed that my mama’s visit had rattled any nerves. Poppy told a joke every now and then, and I would fake-laugh to let them know I could play the game. Anything to keep conversation away from the car with the blue door.
It was only after I had dressed for bed that I discovered how bad it really was. Their words floated from the kitchen table and every so often became tangled with the clanging sound of a spoon hitting Nana’s cup of cocoa, the same cocoa she claimed settled worried nerves.
“You reckon she’ll follow through with this?” Poppy asked.
“I don’t know what to think. She mentioned some man. Claimed he had plenty of money.”
“They all had money, didn’t they?” Poppy snorted, and for a second I thought he might be laughing. “Don’t worry none. If she means business, then we’ll just find us a lawyer.”
“A lawyer costs big money. Big money.” Nana almost moaned the words. “I expect we could mortgage the land if we had to.”
Crickets outside my bedroom window roared at the silence that followed. The land that Nana’s daddy sharecropped and saved years to buy. I pictured the rough and faded number on the porch floor, 1918. The wavy numbers, carved with his own pocketknife, were a permanent memorial. I could almost reach out and touch his long wiry beard every time Nana told me the story of the day her daddy became his own man. “No matter what the world may take away from you, they’ll never be able to strip you of where you come from,” she’d always say at the end.
Hours later when stillness fell upon the house, I was relieved to awake and find the sheet still dry. Easing the door open, I saw a light glowing in the kitchen. The big black Bible was laid open like a place mat on the table. With her back to me, Nana sat cupping a white card. The words were too faint to read, but the gold seal stood out all bright and shiny. The same gold seal that the Senator, Mrs. Strickland, had pointed out to us when she passed around her business cards. The state seal that was there to remind us that, as long as we lived in North Carolina, we could count on liberty and justice.
Four
Miss Belinda jumped up from her pew and began hitting the tambourine. Chatter from the instrument ignited her husband even more. “Jesus said ask all in my name and it shall be given to you. All! You want a mountain to move? Then tell it to move! You want healing? Then tell your mountain of disease to move on out! You want to have your bills paid up? Then explode your mountain of debt with faith!” As the tambourine chimes died down, so did his tone. “But you can’t doubt. No, sir. Doubt will do nothing but put a roadblock on the blessing.”
As Brother Bailey wiped the sweat off his brow, I slid along the pew and rested my head in Nana’s soft lap. I knew the routine. The excitement had faded, and it was safe to recline. I had learned not to lie down on the pew until he finished his yelling. The words he hissed whenever he got into one of his fits would always end up coming out in a fine mist of spat. So I had learned to wait to take my position, just like Brother Bailey said we had to wait on our blessings.
Poppy liked to say that Nana had been going to Rock Creek Holiness Church ever since Moses was a baby. Wednesday night, Sunday, Sunday night: we were engraved in the count that hung on the little brown attendance board every week. All the ladies in the church wore their hair the same way Nana did, long and pulled up in buns. Whenever I had to get up to use the bathroom, on the way up the aisle I liked to turn around and study the tight, round buns behind me. White, red, black, blonde, and even light blue, they looked like speckles from a rainbow spread out across the congregation.
After the service we stood in the small church foyer until the last member had exited out of the glass doors. The scent of muscle ointment and Juicy Fruit gum still hung in the air. Nana eyed the sanctuary, where Brother Bailey and Miss Belinda wrapped microphone cords until they coiled in submission.
“I need to talk with Brother Bailey a minute. You go on and play outside.”
The red car divided the space between Brother Bailey’s brick home and the pine
s that lined God’s home. In the moonlight black stripes twirled up at the sides of the car like a bolt of lightning. It was Murphy’s car, Brother Bailey’s son. He was fresh back from Vietnam and, as I heard Nana once say to a friend on the phone, “never will amount to nothing.” The light in the car came on for a second, and I could make out two heads. Easing towards the car, I ran from pine to pine, using each one for cover. A flash of excitement filled me, and I wished Mac was here. He would make me brave enough to do something really funny, like jump on the back of the car and yell like a crazy man. I pictured Mac and me then taking off running and landing shoulder first in a pad of pine straw, laughing until breathing itself was painful.
Without Mac, I settled on mapping out a game of private detective, fixing to capture a white-trash criminal, with the trees as my cover. When I jumped from behind a broad tree, fingers held like a gun, I found I was too late. Someone had already been captured.
Through the back window. Murphy was kissing Trudy Beatty on the neck. Her head was all thrown back and the flow of long red hair cascaded to the edge of her white bra. I stood frozen, watching him pull and twist at the top. Uneasiness swept over me and, though part of me wanted to look closer, all I could do was run. I skidded on the slick pine straw and almost tripped over a fallen limb before reaching the church. When I got to the glass doors, I held the cold handle until my breath regained a regular rhythm.
Slipping into the back pew, I tried to focus on the image of Brother Bailey and Miss Belinda with their arms draped over Nana in a way that reminded me of a football huddle. No matter how weird it looked, the sight didn’t bother me as much as seeing Trudy in her underwear and Murphy slurping on her neck. To distract myself, I fished a discarded bulletin from the tiled floor and began making a paper plane. All the while, Brother Bailey’s voice circled over me waiting for a place to land.
“Now, sister, the Lord knows all the grief that girl has caused you. He won’t put more on you than you can bear. But you have to show Him you’re serious.” Brother Bailey lifted his fist high into the air, and Nana nodded.
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