by Tayari Jones
“I was born here in Atlanta. I used to be married, but I’m not married anymore.” He didn’t say anything, so she kept talking.
“I’m twenty years old. Did I tel you my name? It’s Gwendolyn, but people just cal me Gwen. Oh, I don’t know what else to say. I never knew my mother. And I didn’t march with Dr. King. I went to Spelman to see him lie in state, but the line was so long and I had to go to work. I live in a rooming house because I don’t have a lot of money.”
He kept driving, but my mother didn’t say anything else. She wanted to get out of the car. That would be the good thing about talking to a priest, how you said what you had to say and then you got to leave. But she was trapped here in this Cadil ac, getting sick from the smel of her own perfume. “I think I’m ready to go now.”
Without turning toward her, James said, “B-but we didn’t have coffee yet.”
“I don’t feel wel .”
“I know that I’m married,” James said. “I am not asking you to do anything that would make you feel low. I just want to have coffee with you. I have never b-b-been out for coffee or for dinner with a woman be-before.”
“Except your wife,” Mother said, regretting immediately the note of sarcasm in her voice. “It’s not my business. Sorry.”
“N-n-not even with her,” he said with a sadness that was palpable. “It’s a long story.”
“My life is a long story,” my mother said.
“Mine, too,” said my father.
Then they both chuckled that the conversation had come round again. She imagined it like a circle, a child’s bal , or even the whole world.
And this is how it started. Just with coffee and the exchange of their long stories. Love can be incremental. Predicaments, too. Coffee can start a life just as it can start a day. This was the meeting of two people who were destined to love from before they were born, from before they made choices that would complicate their lives. This love just rol ed toward my mother as though she were standing at the bottom of a steep hil . Mother had no hand in this, only heart.
3
NOTES ON PRECOCITY
EVEN THOUGH MY FATHER was a bit on the short side and wore glasses thick as a slice of Wonder bread, there was an uprightness about him that inspired a brand of respect. Even after everything that happened, he never lost this. Much of the esteem he enjoyed had to do with being profiled as a local entrepreneur once in the Atlanta Journal and twice in the Daily World. Witherspoon Sedans was a smal fleet — three cars and two drivers: himself and Raleigh Arrington, his adopted brother and best friend. I could probably count the times that I have seen my father dressed like a regular person and not like a driver. There was no shame in it, however. After al , he was his own boss. When you have to wear dress blues and a hat and you work for white people, you’re wearing a costume. You’re no better than the monkey decked out in a red jacket with gold braiding. But when it’s your own company and you picked the uniform yourself out of a catalog, when it was ordered in just your size and didn’t need to be hemmed or let out, wel , that was different.
It’s no coincidence that he was wearing his uniform when my mother met him that famous afternoon in Davison’s. It’s remarkable, the way he seems almost fused with his clothing. It made him more confident, and when he was confident he stuttered less. And when he stuttered less you hardly noticed his heavy glasses; he seemed tal er.
James was an easygoing man, master of his emotions. “The key to life,” he told me once, “is to avoid the highs and the lows. It’s the peaks and val eys that mess you up.” He liked to behave as though his uninflected disposition was because of some philosophical leaning, but I knew it was because passion of any sort brought out the stammer and turned him into a freak. Anyone who has ever seen James when the stammer rode him could tel how much it hurt him. His face and neck seemed to swel as though the words were trapped in there, painful and deadly like sickle cel s.
And final y, with a jerk, spasm, or kick, the sentence would break free, unfettered and whole.
My parents didn’t real y fight. The most they ever did was “have words,” which was my mother’s expression. Their disagreements were rare because of James’s little-from-the-left-little-from-the right disposition and also because there was no time for bickering. James ate over at our house only once a week, and once or twice a year he spent the night. When we received him in our apartment, seated him at our table, we treated him like the guest he was. We poured Coke with the meal, said grace like it was Sunday, and even let him smoke in the living room. My job was keeping him in clean glass ashtrays. He said his wife, Laverne, made him stand on the porch with his cigarettes, even when it rained.
Most children probably remember their parents’ arguments with a stone-in-the-stomach ache. In the seventh grade, I read a novel cal ed It’s Not the End of the World, about divorcing parents. My teacher gave it to me, quietly, in a plain brown sack, after my mother explained to her that she and my father were separated but possibly reconciling, the perfect falsehood to explain his inconsistent presence in our lives. The book was about a girl who was torn apart by her parents’ fighting. I thanked my teacher for the gift, but my feelings could not have been further from those of the traumatized heroine of that Judy Blume book. When my parents argued, it was over me; for the brief duration of their spats, I was at the center of something.
Mother never argued on her own behalf. It was “always about Dana Lynn.” My father, before he refused to accommodate her demands always, first, insisted that he loved me. There was a time in my life when that was almost enough.
“This is about fairness, James,” my mother would say, indicating to me that what was once a conversation had now morphed into “words.” I could watch my father’s neck bloat a little, as his defenses gathered there.
I am not a particularly graceful individual. I’m no klutz, but a person doesn’t see me move and think, “Those hips were made for swaying” or
“Those toes were born to pirouette.” I am not putting myself down. As my mother would say, “Self-deprecation is not attractive.” And as she wouldn’t say, people in our position cannot afford to make themselves look bad. So when I say that I wasn’t meant to be a dancer, I am just tel ing the basic truth. But that didn’t stop my mother from saying to James, “I think that Dana should enjoy bal et lessons, just as your other daughter does.” She loved that word, enjoy, and I had to admit that I liked it, too.
Turns out, I didn’t literal y enjoy the bal et lessons. When I’d envisioned myself as a bal erina, I saw myself in a lavender tutu with pink ribbons laced up my calves. Instead, I ended up in a hot upstairs room at the YWCA, crammed into a leotard the color of bandages, forcing my bare feet into impossible positions.
When I was about ten, my mother started lobbying for me to take extra classes in science. I was in favor of this, as I liked biology, but at my school we didn’t get to do any experiments. On the last day of the school year, my teacher handed out flyers advertising the Saturday Science Academy at Kennedy Middle School. My mother said that she’d ask my father for the thirty-dol ar deposit after dinner on Wednesday. To prepare, I brushed my hair around the edges and put on a short-sleeve col ared shirt that I thought made me look smart. I stuck a pencil behind my ear.
We ate dinner that night as we always did, at the kitchen table. My mother invited James into the den to watch Tic Tac Dough and enjoy a spot of cream sherry. He smiled and thanked my mother as she handed him a pretty glass.
“James,” she said, “I want Dana to enjoy the benefits of extra tutoring in science.”
James took a smal sip of the sherry. His throat worked to swal ow it down.
“Science is very important,” my mother said. She talked as she walked to stand in front of the television. “There are a number of programs in the city that are open to exceptional children. Don’t you think Dana is exceptional?”
James said, “I didn’t say she wasn’t exceptional.”
“Good,” my moth
er said. “Because she is.”
I sat at his feet with my pencil behind my ear and tried to sit up exceptional y straight.
“That kind of thing costs money,” James said.
“She has two working parents,” my mother pointed out. James didn’t say anything. My mother sat down beside him on the sofa.
This she said softly: “The Saturday Science Academy makes al owances for female heads of household, you know.”
I had not known about this, and it puzzled me. If she could get me in free, why were we even bothering to involve my father at al ?
“James,” my mother said in a voice that was pleasant on the surface, “why are you so quiet?”
Sitting at his feet, I could feel his legs jerking at my back. The stammer could be like that, the words squirming through his body. With great effort he said, “You know I love you, Dana.”
I gave my mother a sharp look. “Love” meant I wasn’t going to be able to go. “Please,” I said in a voice that was only a squeak.
Mother touched her lips to tel me to be quiet, that I should let her handle my father “Why not? Is it because she’s a pretty girl? I have read that parents don’t make the same investment in the minds of their good-looking daughters. Dana is an intel ectual, you know.”
I nodded, hoping that this didn’t count as getting into the conversation.
“Dana, go and get the brochure and show it to your father.” I pushed myself up from the floor and found my feet. I didn’t even get out of the room before he said, “Ch-ch-chaurisse is taking c-c-classes at the Saturday Academy.”
“I see,” my mother said.
But I knew that she had known al along. If Chaurisse was going, then I wasn’t going to get to go. This was one of the basic rules of being an outside child. I thought about the flyer posted on my bedroom mirror. The kids in the pictures held beakers over Bunsen burners.
“Wel , I am sure Chaurisse wil enjoy herself this summer.”
Carol Burnett was on the TV, and if anyone could see us, I bet we looked like a regular family.
“I don’t need your permission to enrol her, James,” my mother said. “This is not a threat. It’s just a fact.”
“St-t . . .” My father struggled. I felt sorry for him sometimes, even at a moment like this.
“Dana needs to know science, too.”
“Gw-w-wen,” he said, “why do you k-k-keep doing this? I try to be a good man. You know I am doing everything I can.”
Mother said, “There are several programs for gifted children who excel in science. I’ve done some research.”
I looked over at my mother. “Do they have Bunsen burners?” She shushed me with a subtle movement of her hands. I knelt at my father’s feet, letting my weight settle back on my heels.
“I can’t afford any more payments,” James said. “You know I am stretched real thin.” This was said to my mother. Then he turned to me, “I love you, baby girl.”
I was ready to tel him that it was okay, that I didn’t have to go to science lessons. He seemed so sad and sincere. My mother touched her lips again, and I didn’t say a word.
“It seems, James, that you have money for what you want to have money for.” She didn’t raise or lower her voice. “If you don’t have money to pay for her to go to another program, then I wil just have to send her to the Saturday Academy, where she can go for free. It’s just that simple.”
“Ch-ch-chaurisse is already going to that program. You know that, Gwen. Why d-d-do you have to go through this with everything? You know I am doing the best I can.”
“Are you doing the best you can for Dana? That’s what I want to know. I am not asking you to buy me a fox fur, although I saw your wife, and she looks quite lovely in hers.”
“Y-y-you s-s-saw Laverne?”
“I’m not blind,” my mother said. “I can’t help who I run into in the grocery store, Like you always say, ‘Atlanta ain’t nothing but a country town.’”
“St-t-tay away —”
“Nobody is interested in your quote-unquote family. I only brought up the matter of the fox fur to let you know that this is not about competition. This is about opportunity for Dana Lynn.”
“D-d-don’t you —”
“Can she at least go to the Fernbank Planetarium? I have a brochure, and I have enough money for half.”
James continued to fight with his throat to release the words jammed there. With a sudden kick of his right leg, barely missing my shoulder, he said, “Stay the hel away from my family.”
But by then he was slumped and exhausted. Although his words were sharp and direct, his rounded shoulders showed that he was beaten.
“Calm down,” my mother said, rubbing his neck. “Don’t curse like that in front of Dana. Do you want her to grow up attracted to violent men?”
I couldn’t turn around and look at him. The planetarium didn’t have anything to do with Bunsen burners.
“Tel your father thank you, Dana,” my mother said.
“Thank you,” I said with my back stil facing him.
“Dana,” she said, “what kind of appreciation is that?”
I turned to him and said, “Thank you. I real y want to take the science lessons.”
“You’re welcome,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” I said, and then I couldn’t help adding, “It’s not fair.” Looking up at him, I wanted a hug. That was the ful extent of my ambition. I knew he wouldn’t say that I could go ahead and go to the Saturday Academy, even if I promised not to bother Chaurisse. But I hoped he would hug me and tel me that he was sorry that I had to get second pick for everything and that he was sorry that my mother couldn’t wear a fox-fur coat and that I couldn’t tel anybody my daddy’s real name. But he didn’t say anything and his neck wasn’t twitching so I knew that he wasn’t stuck. He just didn’t have any sorry s to say.
Since Mother was reared by her father with no mother in sight, she believes herself to be an expert in the ways of gentlemen. She says she knows how to hear al the things they leave unsaid. Some nights, after she kissed me good night, she would add, “Your father wishes you sweet dreams.” I asked her once why he couldn’t cal and tel me himself. “He’s your father, but first he is a man. A man is just a man, and that’s al we have to work with.”
After the Saturday Science Academy incident, just after James left our apartment for his house on Lynhurst, my mother sipped from his abandoned glass of sherry and said, “He’l be back. And I bet there is a fox fur involved.” And she was almost right.
Less than a month later, I was up late, watching Saturday Night Live, and my mother was asleep on the couch. I turned the volume down low so she wouldn’t wake up and make me go to bed. My face was pressed to the felt-covered television speaker, leaving me to feel the jokes when I couldn’t real y hear them. On the coffee table near my passed-out mother, the ice in her glass popped as it settled.
James didn’t knock; he used his key to open the burglar door and the wooden door. My mother sat up with a start. “James?”
“Who else could it be? You got another man you didn’t tel me about?” He laughed, fol owing her voice into the den. “Dana!” he cal ed, angling his
voice toward my closed bedroom door.
“I’m in the den, too,” I said.
“Glad I didn’t wake anybody up.”
James wasn’t wearing his uniform. This evening he was wearing jeans and a crisp blue shirt. In his arms was a large white box. He grabbed my mother around the waist and kissed her. “I love me a woman that can appreciate a cocktail. What you been drinking?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” my mother said.
“Cuba Libre.”
“I can’t believe you are running the streets this time of night.” Mother was smiling while they talked. We both acted like we didn’t notice the big white box.
“Can’t I come over any time I like because I miss my woman? Can’t I deliver a special gift for my baby girl?”
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p; I perked up. “That box is for me?”
“You know it is.”
“James, I know you haven’t been shopping at this hour.”
“Who said nothing about shopping? I been playing cards, and I been playing wel .” He pul ed off the top of the box with a flourish, revealing a waist-length fur jacket, junior size 7 — too big, but I’d grow into it.
“James,” my mother said, feeling the soft fur, “tel me you did not win this in a card game.”
“Yes, I did. My buddy Charlie Ray was playing so bad; al his money was gone so he put this coat on the table.”
My mother said, “James, you have to take it back. That coat belongs to someone.”
“You are absolutely right. It belongs to me. And soon as she comes over here and gives me some sugar, it wil belong to Dana. Come on, baby girl, p-p-put this on, and let your daddy see how p-p-pretty you are.”
I paused for a second at the hitch in his voice, but he smiled and I knew that it would be okay.
The coat was piled on the floor beside him, and he held his arms outstretched. Feeling like I was in a movie, I hugged him around the neck and kissed him loudly on the cheek. James smel ed sweet, like liquor and cola. To this day and for the rest of my life, I wil always have a soft spot for a man with rum on his breath.
I think about the world and the way that things take place and in what order. I am not one of those people who believe that everything happens for a reason. Or, if I am, I don’t believe that everything happens for a good reason. But the first time that I encountered my sister, Chaurisse, when I wasn’t under the careful supervision of my mother, was at the Atlanta Civic Center in 1983. There’s only so much that you can chalk up to coincidence. I believe in the eventuality of things. What’s done in the dark shal come to the light. What goes up comes down. What goes around comes around. There are a mil ion of these sayings, al , in their own way, true. And isn’t that what’s supposed to set you free?