The Untelling

by Tayari Jones

  I unfastened my seat belt and leaned toward him as it snapped back into place. I kissed Dwayne hard on his mouth, wanting to climb down his throat, find refuge in the warm pit of him.

  He put one hand to the nape of my neck, fingering the tight curls there, and used his other hand to undo his own seat belt. I smiled into his mouth. In the privacy of my mind I whispered IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou.

  He jerked away like he had heard me. “We’re going to be late.”

  “We’re already late,” I said, pulling his face back to my own. “I don’t care.”

  He turned to look at the clock on his dashboard. “Girl, you made me lose all track of time.”

  I leaned back in my seat and watched a woman walking through the parking lot. She moved with the rapid tick of high heels. The silver buttons on her trapeze coat were open, flashing a snug-fitting gray dress underneath. When she got within a few feet of our car, she shook her finger at us and laughed with a broad grin that crinkled her eyes shut.

  “She reminds me of my mama,” I told Dwayne.

  “That’s not how I pictured her.”

  “I mean, that’s what she was like before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before everything.”

  He smiled. “Let my mama tell it; that’s how she was too. She likes to pull out old pictures of herself looking all slim and everything and then she says to me and my sister, ‘Look what you two did to me.’” He chuckled. “You need to meet my mama one day. She’s a trip.”

  While he was talking, I watched the pretty lady in the side mirror. She climbed into her butter-colored luxury car and started the engine.

  “Let’s not go,” I said to Dwayne, clutching at his meaty upper arm. “Can we just go back to my house? Rochelle is out of town until tomorrow. It could be just us. We can listen to CDs. Drink some wine.”

  “Make some love,” he said with an open grin. “It don’t matter to me, but won’t it make your mama mad if we just don’t show up? From what you said, I’m not trying to get on her bad side.”

  “Please,” I said. “Please. I don’t want to go. Let’s just go back.”

  I hoped that my mother was not still angry about last December’s no-show. That situation was compounded by the fact that Hermione and Mr. Phinazee hadn’t made it to that particular dinner either. “But at least they called,” Mother said. “I didn’t know what had happened to you.” I’d apologized again, not offering any explanation for myself. When I called last week to tell her I’d be coming to dinner with Dwayne, she said, “Am I to take you seriously this time?” I didn’t explain that I was serious last time, that every interaction with her is serious for me. I just said that yes, ma’am, I would be there.

  For the occasion Dwayne borrowed Head Cheese’s burgundy Jetta. The repo man was looking for it, but it should be safe outside my mother’s house for a couple of hours. An air freshener dangled from the windshield, filling the car with the Christmas scent of pine.

  “Right here,” I told him. “Don’t pull in the driveway. Leave the car at the curb.”

  He sat in the car and looked. It wasn’t a nice house. Before Daddy and Genevieve got killed, we lived in a nice split-level on Bunnybrooke Drive. It was red brick with optimistic yellow shutters on the windows and lime-green electric appliances inside. The backyard was big enough for a pool, and saving for this had always been an abstract family goal.

  We moved into the Willow Street house after everyone had been in the ground for a few months, once Mama realized that the insurance wasn’t going to be enough to subsidize our lifestyle. The house, 739 Willow Street, wasn’t shabby, exactly. The split-level on Bunnybrooke was nicer, with its finished basement and extra bedroom for company, but the house on Willow Street was good enough for the three of us—two bedrooms, one bathroom, tiny closets, like all the others on the block. But my mother’s house seemed steeped in sadness in a way that her neighbors’ houses did not. Hermione blamed it on the sprawling hickory-nut tree in the middle of the yard.

  “It sucks all the nutrients out of the soil. That’s why we can’t have flowers or even grass like regular people.” She said this nearly every time we were in this house together. “And, Mother, what if there’s an ice storm? One branch could tear a hole in the roof.”

  My mother always said the tree was fine. That it gave shade. Kept the electric bill down.

  “It looks okay,” Dwayne said. “The way you described it, I was expecting to see the Munster house. It’s okay. Just needs some paint or something.”

  I knew that this was more a matter of simple maintenance. Just last summer Mama had hired workers to install aluminum siding.

  “Maybe not paint,” Dwayne said, staring out of the window. “But something to spruce the place up a little bit.” He got out of the car and walked around to open the door for me. I hoped my mother was watching through the picture window as I took his hand and rose from the clean new car.

  “Front door or side door?” Dwayne wanted to know.

  “Front,” I said. “No, side.”

  “That’s your sister’s minivan in the driveway?”

  I nodded.

  “Then she went in the side. Let’s go in the way she went in. Front door is for company anyway.”

  We walked up the driveway with our pinkies locked. Hermione and Mr. Phinazee’s van was filthy, as though they’d driven across the country, not just across town. Dead bugs studded the windshield and red dirt decorated the sides like painted-on flames.

  Dwayne peeked in the window and said, “That’s an upscale baby seat. How much do you think something like that costs?”

  I turned and hugged him. “I’m so hot. I’m so scared. I should have drunk some wine before we left, to take the edge off.”

  “No drinking for pregnant ladies.” Dwayne kissed me quick on my forehead and pressed the bell. “Don’t worry. It’s all good.”

  My mother came to the door with a red-lipsticked smile. “Why did you come to the side door, Ariadne? We don’t want to make the gentleman walk through the kitchen.”

  Dwayne smiled. “No trouble at all.” Then, ignoring her extended hand, he dragged my mother into a confident embrace.

  She raised her eyebrows in surprise and then she melted into the hug, closing her eyes and leaning into Dwayne’s bulk. She looked as though she wanted to press her cheek to his, to raise one foot from the floor like a young girl greeting a returning soldier.

  I watched her and I envied them both. I envied Dwayne the warmth of my mother’s touch. I would have liked to ask him how she smelled. If she still wore L’Air du Temps. Were her arms thin? Was she developing a little pouch of a stomach?

  And of course I envied her position inside his embrace. One of the few places where I felt protected and secure.

  He released her and she smiled. “It’s good to know you. I hope we’ll be seeing a lot of you.” She turned back toward the stove. “I’m still cooking. Take him into the den to meet everyone.” As she waved us away, I noticed the engraved gold band, still on her left hand.

  When we were in the hallway in front of a collection of my baby pictures and Hermione’s, I said, “Was that okay?”

  He shrugged. “I was just trying to come in smiling.”

  “I think it worked.”

  “But she didn’t even say hello to you,” he said. “I didn’t appreciate that.”

  I squeezed his hand. “Welcome to my life.”

  We lingered in the corridor leading to the added-on den. The hallway was lined with photographs—studio portraits, framed snapshots, magazine prints. People we knew, people we didn’t, us and celebrities, all clustered in this hallway. Captured in a cheap poster frame was a Sealtest ice cream box featuring two smiling sisters. The girls were not Hermione and me.

  We’d met those girls in Piedmont Park the day that a photographer was scouting for little black girls. I was five and Hermione was ten. Daddy was there too, barbecuing. Steaks for himself and Mama. Hot dogs for the kids
.

  This was just after the playground had been renovated with the addition of a large spiral slide. Everyone wanted to ride. We stood in line, standing on fragrant wood chips, with about twenty other children. Then, fighting claustrophobia, we pushed into a column and climbed a twisty staircase that took us to the top of the barber pole slide. It gleamed like chrome and was griddle hot, burning the backs of our legs as we swirled down, squealing, ramming into a clog of boys and girls at the bottom. It was fun and I had run to my mother to tell her so.

  “Stand up straight,” she said. “There is a photographer here. He’s taking pictures of girls to put on the ice cream box. Tell your sister.”

  I ran back to the slide, trying to stand up straight and trot at the same time. I whispered to Hermione, who smiled. She had been chubby even then, but didn’t know yet that there was anything wrong with it. We smiled all afternoon, rode the swings together, clearly sisters, wearing identical red shirts and striped shorts. We hoped that the photographer would think we were cute.

  When he realized that we were mooning for him, he’d returned our attention, aiming the barrel of his camera at us again and again. He called me “Daffodil” and he called Hermione “Gorgeous.” He took our photo near the swings, holding hands, walking backward, smoothing the walls of a sand castle. When we left the park that afternoon, we were sure we’d be celebrities. Black Shirley Temples. We waited for several months, eagerly scanning the frozen food dessert case, but we never saw any black girls on Sealtest boxes. Daddy was dead by the time Mother saw the other girls. She recognized them, the second pair of sisters at the park. They hadn’t worn cute identical outfits; their hair hadn’t been oiled and ribboned. They had bad teeth. No one considered them to be competition. Mother fed us the ice cream in parfait glasses, saved the box, and hung it on the wall. To remind us, she said.

  Dwayne put his finger on a framed snapshot of a snaggletoothed girl in a brown velvet dress. It was a department store portrait, complete with a pull-down holiday screen.

  “Is that you?” he said. “My mama has the exact same picture of me.”

  I smiled and said that it was me, although I had no idea who was in that photo. The girl seemed to stare past the camera, so I figured that she was one of the children from the Institute. Mama liked the blind children, especially the ones that didn’t cover their eyes, the ones who somehow pretended to see. “They don’t complain,” she said. “You would think they would have a lot to complain about, but they don’t. They just wait their turn.”

  I touched a photo of Hermione and me wearing blue shirts with large white collars. “That’s me and my sister.”

  He laughed. “I guess it was the seventies. When you meet my mama, she’ll show you all my Afro pictures.”

  I took his hand and took him into the den, where Hermione sat on the brown shag carpet wearing a pistachio-colored pantsuit. The front was marked with nuggets of half-sucked candy. Little Link was sober and pensive, oblivious to Hermione’s efforts to teach him the difference between a circle and a square. Mr. Phinazee read the Sunday funnies.

  “Hey, everyone,” I said. “This is Dwayne.”

  Hermione looked up and clambered to her feet. She tried to pluck the candy chunks from her jacket. “Mama didn’t tell me you were coming.”

  “I came by your house the other day.”

  “I told her,” Mr. Phinazee said. “It was nice visiting with you.”

  “I meant to call you,” Hermione said.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  My sister touched her hair. “I look like shit. And you brought somebody with you.”

  “Dwayne,” I said, “this is my sister, Hermione.” I picked Little Link up and put him on my hip. He was solid, real, and silent in my arms. “This is Lincoln, my nephew.”

  “I’m two,” Link said, holding up three grimy fingers. He stretched his hands toward Dwayne, who took the little guy from my arms.

  “And this,” I said, gesturing to my sister’s husband, “is Mr. Phinazee.”

  “Earl,” he said gently. “Just Earl.”

  “Earl, I’m Dwayne.”

  “Nice to meet you, Dwayne. You’ve got a good haircut over there.”

  I wasn’t fooled by my mother’s red oven mitts. I knew the meal had been catered. I recognized the menu from Seretha’s, the soul food restaurant near our church. Fried chicken, pecan candied yams, and three-cheese macaroni. The green beans, she probably poured from a can herself, but the coconut cake was definitely Seretha’s.

  At my mother’s urging Dwayne said grace. He gave the standard prayers, thanking God for the food for the nourishment of our bodies, but he delivered it with a certain eloquence that made him seem like he could be a preacher if he wasn’t so humble. While everyone said, “Amen,” he squeezed my knee under the table.

  I felt myself relaxing. My body temperature dropped and the water under my arms dried. It was as if Dwayne was some sort of antidote to my family’s usual tensions. Hermione laughed and Little Link scooped his vegetables with a rubber-tipped spoon.

  I watched Dwayne flatter my mother, exclaiming over this bought meal. She grinned like a girl. I took a close look at my fiancé. He did look like a preacher with his fresh haircut and white shirt. Why had I never noticed this before?

  “Earl,” my mother said, “more sweet tea?”

  I swung my eyes to my sister. Like me, Mama usually called him Mr. Phinazee. But for Mama this was not merely the force of habit. Before he started sleeping with Hermione, she’d always called him Earl. She called him Mister as a matter of spite.

  Mr. Phinazee said, “That would be nice.”

  Hermione laughed and said, “Dwayne, we should invite you to join the family.”

  He grinned in return and showed his crooked, charming smile. I felt his leg press mine under the table. Of course I noticed the lead-in so perfect it seemed to be scripted. I pressed his leg back, silently pleading with him to let the opportunity go, to wait until there was a moment less symmetrical, not so choreographed. I wanted this to feel like real life, not like television.

  “Actually,” Dwayne said, setting his chicken leg on the good china and wiping his fingers on the linen napkin, “we’re engaged.”

  “Praise God,” my mother said.

  I sat beside him with my mouth stretched into a smile that cracked the dry skin on my lips. I willed myself to feel happier. To let some of the joy infect me too. Mr. Phinazee stood and shook Dwayne’s hand over the gravy boat. He pumped it up and down, repeating the word “congratulations.” Hermione took my left hand and examined the ring. “Don’t worry,” she said as she hugged me. “You can always trade up.”

  Mother, from her place at the head of the table, tapped her glass with a salad fork. “When’s the date?”

  “June twenty-fifth.”

  “So soon?” Hermione said. “That’s just a few weeks from now.”

  “I have a feeling,” said Mr. Phinazee, “that there’s more good news on the way.”

  Dwayne gave a sheepish little-boy smile and said, “What can I say?”

  My family laughed and clapped like a studio audience. Mother rose and returned with champagne flutes, cloudy with neglect. My fiancé’s name hovered on three pairs of lips, four if you counted Little Link, five if you counted the words uttered under my breath. What about me? I wanted to shout. I’m the one having the baby. It’s me that’s family. But I said nothing and raised my empty glass, trying to smile as everyone drank to Charming Dwayne.

  When we climbed into the Jetta, I was so angry that my body burned with it. I pulled the neckline of my dress away from my sweaty skin and blew cool breath onto my cleavage.

  “I think it went really well,” Dwayne said. “It wasn’t what I was expecting at all. They seem pretty cool.” He cleaned one of his molars with his fingernail.

  “They are not usually like that.”

  “Maybe they’ve changed,” he said.

  I turned the air-conditioning vents toward
me and looked out the window. It was seven o’clock and the sun had just started to set.

  “What?” Dwayne said, showing a little pique of his own. “Seems like you’re disappointed that they didn’t hate me. Like you were waiting for the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral.”

  “You have chicken grease on your lip.”

  “Maybe this is a mood swing or something, but you are definitely tripping.”

  “You don’t know them,” I said. “My mother gets so excited she breaks out a magnum of champagne? That’s alcohol, you know. Eloise Jackson kissed you when we were leaving? Hermione says she’ll call me? Don’t you see why I’m pissed? They have never acted that way for just me. And stop being so impressed. My mother didn’t cook that food. She bought it.”

  “So?” Dwayne said, merging onto I-20. “This isn’t even our car. It’s Head Cheese’s.”

  “Just take me home,” I said.

  We drove on, listening to the radio. The evening had set upon us quickly. Dwayne turned on his lights and the DJ announced that he would be playing slow jams from now until midnight.

  “Maybe I did try a little too hard,” he said. “The coconut cake was good, but it wasn’t that good.” He looked at me with a smile. “But I wanted them to like me. Make things easier for us and for the baby.”

  “I wanted them to like you too.” I didn’t turn away from the window. We were just past Ashby Street, the gateway to the West End. A tall desperate-looking man ran to our car and squirted the windshield with dirty dishwater. Dwayne fumbled to find the wiper controls and shooed the man away.

  “Crackheads,” he said. “I don’t know how you stand it over here.”

  “I wanted them to like you too,” I said again. “I just wasn’t ready for them to love you.”

  Chapter Seven

  The Atlanta Women’s Center is part of a huge medical confederacy housed in a glass tower in the middle of downtown. When I got in the door, I told a pretty Latina my name and she handed me a manila folder. I took it and followed her instructions to a shabby upstairs waiting room. Two other young women sat beside me on a worn understuffed couch, watching a video demonstrating how to do breast exams when you’re in the shower. Neither of them looked too worried. They seemed confident and happy like they were just here to find out exactly how healthy they were. I, on the other hand, was starting to get a little sick. My muscles felt to be burning just under the skin. Sweat trickled from under my arms, down my sides.