The Untelling

by Tayari Jones

  This is my most vivid memory of my father, although it happened years before I was born. My father has been dead most of my life. I don’t have many real memories of him, no stories that haven’t been retouched from multiple tellings. This story, the one of how he loved my mother the moment he met her, is my best memory of him, even though it happened before I existed. It’s my favorite memory of Mama too. I like to imagine her through his eyes, pretty and swiss-dotted, chocolate- eating and laughing. My memories of my mother’s smile are as distant and blurred as those of my father’s face.

  When I die, I want to be cremated. I don’t have plans for the ashes, but I want them to be discarded, dumped somewhere with no marker.

  On my father’s birthday we go to the cemetery to lay flowers on his grave. We bring blossoms for Genevieve too, but we don’t make a special trip for her birthday. I suppose it would be more democratic to commemorate the April day that we lost them both, a day equally significant to a thirty-eight-year-old man and a girl less than one. But this would be dishonest somehow. Genevieve’s death was just insult. Daddy’s was the injury.

  Lincoln and Genevieve Jackson are buried in Westview Cemetery, five gorgeous acres of grief. They lie side by side, like man and wife, under matching brass plates.

  When I was a little girl, we used to cut through the cemetery to avoid the traffic on Gordon Road. As we wound through the green hills, I’d mash my face to the car window admiring the plaster angels, heavy-winged and weeping. In the center of the graveyard is a four-story tower with a notched top, the sort of structure where fairy-tale princesses are held hostage by ogres. Before I was ten, I never thought of the dead people under the elaborate markers. When I saw fresh dirt heaped under a green funeral tent, I only noticed the flowers.

  Daddy and Genevieve are at the back of the cemetery, nearly a quarter mile from the nearest marble monument. In this section of Westview the graves are marked with flat metal plates, so that the groundskeeper can just roll over them with a riding mower. I wondered about the other families who buried their loved ones out here. Were they the sort of people who asked that mourners make donations to charity in lieu of flowers? Maybe they were wealthy misers who’d rather buy stocks instead of paying high rent for the dead. Or maybe they were like us, feeling guilty and poor as we passed some other “beloved father’s” monument. This back pasture plot was all that we could afford at Westview.

  Although the cemetery itself is opulent, the neighborhood around it is decayed and rotting. I would never be willing to live over here. People like Dwayne think that all depressed areas are the same, but anybody who lives in a less-than-desirable zip code can tell you different. This stretch of MLK, just before it branches off to Abernathy, near the Marta station—this mile or two really has nothing to offer anyone. The real estate agents are not buzzing about its possibility. Even if you were to raze the buildings—the crumbling apartment buildings with No Trespassing signs, these condemned homes in which people live anyway, people with children—even if these structures were leveled, it wouldn’t be right to build on this land. The sadness permeates the soil like nuclear waste.

  Mama sighed as we waited at a red light on MLK. When our family ran into the magnolia, this was called Gordon Road. Now the road bears the name of Martin Luther King and at the fork honors Dr. King’s number two man, Ralph David Abernathy. A neon sign advertised “Best Buy Caskets” to get the attention of the people of the neighborhood who would need both discounts and coffins. Beside it was a liquor store. My mother sighed again and I knew she was thinking that this was not what Dr. King died for.

  “When I was a girl, it was nice over here, a real high-class area.” Mama shook her head. “But now that all of us have moved in here, just look around.” She snorted. “I bet the white folks wish they could have taken the cemetery with them when they all moved to Buckhead.”

  “It’s kind of sad,” Hermione said.

  “Don’t tell me about sad,” Mama said. “I know all about sad.”

  I knew all about sad too. Dwayne gave me my engagement ring nine days ago. I was happy to have it, pleased to reach for items with my left hand. But I knew that this was a temporary happiness. I’d accepted the ring under false pretenses. I’d be found out eventually because there are some things that you just can’t hide. I lay awake many nights, fondling my engagement ring, tapping my nail against the stone, rubbing the narrow gold band like a magic lamp. I woke in the mornings exhausted from wishing and missing Dwayne in advance.

  Hermione stopped the car and got out. The chirp of the car alarm startled a pair of squirrels sunning themselves on Genevieve’s marker. It was noon on the tenth of June. The heat and humidity swaddled us like a filthy blanket.

  I wish that I could think of some other way to pay my respects to Daddy, to honor the memories that I think are mine. When I go to the cemetery with my mother and sister, I can’t tell which stories of him live in my head, what information was reported by my eyes, ears, and hands. Much about what feels like memory to me happened before I was born or in the hours after I was sent to bed. I know that he liked to drink seven-and-seven, that he loved his mother, that he was overly competitive at dominoes and bid whist. But these memories are not mine. The thought pictures that belong to me are the silly incidents recorded by a ten-year-old, a kid who didn’t know that these memories would be all that I would have to carry me into my womanhood.

  So what I remember are things like this: Daddy chewed gum two sticks at a time, different flavors. He would force me to clean my room, and when I finished, he would come in, compliment me on the clean floor, and say, “This is a good start. Call me again when you’re finished.” Daddy never gave in to fake tears, but would melt if my sobbing was genuine. I remember things like this. Things that are not enough when I try to remember him as a father, let alone when I try to remember him as a man.

  The graveside ritual never lasted for more than a half hour. There really wasn’t much to do. I put most of the flowers in the depression in the plaque with Daddy’s name and dates; we gave the rest to Genevieve. The three of us stood there quiet, as though we were waiting for something to happen.

  “Lincoln would have liked Dwayne,” Mama said. “They are cut from the same cloth.”

  I lifted my bowed head and looked at Hermione, who nodded.

  Dropping my eyes to my navy-blue shoes, I wondered if my mother was right. I wondered what my father would have done if my mother had told him that she couldn’t have children. If she had whispered that truth while he fished through his pockets for a metal church key.

  “Oh, Ariadne,” Mama said, touching my stomach. “Who’s going to give you away?”

  The only time you could really see my mother’s age was when she cried. Tears snagged in the grooves under her eyes. On her neck the loose skin trembled with her quiet coughs.

  Hermione took a few steps toward our mother, nudging me aside. My sister was taller than Mama, rounder and bigger as well. She pulled Mama to her chest and rocked her in a moment of role reversal that made me jealous, dizzy, and lonely. I stood there, beside them, quiet and respectful. My heels sank into the grassy yard and I twisted them in further, trying to ruin my good shoes, trying to sacrifice something, since I couldn’t make myself cry.

  Two rows east, a funeral had just ended. The box, slim and baby pink, was poised over a grave, red and open as a mouth. A blanket of Astroturf hid most of the displaced earth. The casket, pastel and cozy, was perfect for a ten-year-old girl. Hermione rocked Mama, the two of them turning their memories over in their heads like dough.

  With eyes so dry they burned, I looked over my shoulder at the men burying the girl. An orange bulldozer was parked nearby, but the workmen completed this job by hand, quietly piling shovelfuls of bloody earth, pausing to blot their sweaty faces with their dirty shirttails.

  I remembered myself when I was ten, the age of the girl in the box. The year Daddy died. I had gone to the beauty parlor for the first time, on my birthday, fo
r Shirley Temple curls, held off my face with a wide purple ribbon. I remembered how disappointed I had been not to look sweet like Cindy on The Brady Bunch. Instead, I looked like me, too tall and too developed to be just ten, a woman’s face under a mop of oily ringlets.

  Where was Daddy at that time? Did he like my new hair? Did he try to cheer me up and tell me that I was pretty as Lena Horne? Did he worry about me? Did he know that I wasn’t safe at ten years old wearing a B-cup? Did he and Mama talk late at night about me, finally deciding that they would ignore it? Treat me like nothing was happening so that maybe nothing would happen?

  Two rows over, the dirt fell on the pink coffin in a fine flurry like wedding rice. I shut my eyes respectfully and tried to remember my father. When had he decided that I was too much of a woman to sit on his lap? I was nine when I tried to climb up and he shoved me onto the floor. Was that when I decided that I wanted curls for my birthday?

  I sucked in clean air to clear these memories. This is not what I wanted to recollect. I wanted to remember times that he took me for ice cream or maybe a time that he and I snuck out and went to the circus without Mama and Hermione. I am sure that we went on some special outings, just the two of us. After all, I had been Daddy’s girl, by all accounts. When he was alive, I was somebody’s favorite.

  Why couldn’t I remember it?

  Mama prayed a moaning prayer into Hermione’s breast.

  The workers kept shoveling red clay with small spades. Listening to their grunts, rhythmic like the men on a chain gang, I remembered my father’s voice. “Have you taken Ariadne to the doctor?”

  I had just gotten home from school, fourth grade.

  Mama said, “I made an appointment. It isn’t exactly an emergency.”

  Daddy said, “I saw her today, walking up the driveway. Just out of the corner of my eye. She looked like a grown-ass woman.”

  I’d gone into my room and looked at myself in the tall, narrow mirror tacked to the back side of my bedroom door. I had been wearing a navy-blue pullover with my green jumper, even though the weather was warm, so boys couldn’t see my bra strap. My B-cup breasts pushed against the green and white embroidered flowers on my girl-sized sweater. I may have looked like a grown woman, but at the same time, I looked like me. I’d kicked the door with my orange and white sneakers, hoping to ruin the mirror in an angry smashing of glass. But it had stayed whole, reminding me how much I’d grown in the last year.

  When we left the cemetery, the girl was only half buried.

  Mama noticed her as we walked back to the car, three unhappy women. “It’s so hard to lose a child.”

  The phone was ringing when I got home from Westview. I undid the locks in a hurry, hoping that it was Dwayne. He often called when I was just walking in the house, like he knew somehow that I was available. I scurried into the kitchen, racing for the wall phone. I needed to hear his voice to remind me that he was still mine.

  Rochelle was home, sitting at the oak table with her fiancé, Rod. They were drinking organic beer from purple bottles. I’ve never quite gotten used to their fantastic otherworldly appearance as a couple. There was Rochelle with her dark skin and silver hair; Rod was nearly her perfect inverse. He was about as white as you could get and still be black. His inky locks fell just below his shoulders. I wondered what sort of children they would produce.

  Rochelle shook her head as I reached for the phone.

  “It’s your mother,” Rod whispered as though she could hear us through the phone.

  “She called four times already,” Rochelle added, just as my mother’s voice spoke out from the answering machine.

  “Rochelle, this is Mrs. Eloise Jackson. I am trying to reach my daughter.”

  Rod pulled two beers from a cardboard carton and handed one to me. “She was crying when she called a few seconds ago.”

  I took the beer, feeling slightly embarrassed. How much had Rochelle told him about me?

  Rochelle said, “How’d it go?”

  I said, “Everyone’s still dead.”

  Rod winced.

  Rochelle massaged my shoulder with one hand and held tight to her bottle with the other. I tilted my face and kissed her fingers before taking a swallow of beer, which tasted faintly of raspberries. They talked honeymoon destinations and made fun of their travel agent. I tried very hard to care, or at least appear to care.

  When my mother called again, I talked loud over her voice streaming from the answering machine. I tried very hard not to care, or at least to appear not to care.

  The phone rang a third time as Rod was making the case for honeymooning in a developing nation.

  Rochelle said to me, “Do you want to take that in the living room?”

  I could imagine my mother sitting at the smoky-glass kitchen table, still wearing her beige suit with gold brocade. She’d have removed her contact lenses, experiencing the world by touch through her blurry gaze. I didn’t know why she wanted to talk to me, but my mother is a woman who doesn’t strive to be understood. I didn’t want to have this conversation, but I had to. I took the call with a two-beer buzz, lying on the hardwood floor, staring at the water-stained ceiling.

  “I’m worried about you,” she said.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” I said. “I just got a little emotional out there, that’s all.”

  My mother sighed. “My girls just lie and lie. Hermione’s so good at it. She should figure out a way to make her living from bending the truth. Do you think I would have let her marry Earl Phinazee if she had been honest about it?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “But you are not much of a liar. You try, but it’s just not you. I am your mother. I know you. I was the first person to ever see your face.”

  “I know.”

  “So tell me,” she said. “What’s going on?”

  It felt like a question that wasn’t really a question, as though Mama knew already and just wanted to see if I was capable of honesty, if I would fess up, tell the truth.

  “Dwayne is going to leave me,” I said at last.

  Kitten padded into the room and settled himself on my chest. I rubbed his furry back and waited for my mother to speak.

  “What did you do?” she said.

  “Nothing.” I stroked the cat and he closed his slit-eyes. “I just think he’s going to leave me, that’s all.”

  “Oh, baby,” she said. “What happened?” Her tone was soft and sugary. This was the way mothers were supposed to be. Warm and omniscient at the same time. Her words were like kind hands, soft and scented. I wasn’t used to this sort of affection from her. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes.

  “I don’t know.”

  “He wouldn’t leave you with a child to raise on your own. He has his shortcomings; I won’t lie and say he isn’t a little rough around the edges, but he wouldn’t abandon you.”

  “There are so many things about me he doesn’t know.” I was crying for real now. I’m sure Mama was surprised; she hadn’t seen me cry since Hermione left us. “So many things about me that you don’t know.”

  “I’m your mother. I’ve known you since you were born.”

  “If Dwayne leaves me, I’ll have a breakdown. I know I will.”

  “He’s not going to leave you,” Mama said. “And if he did, you wouldn’t break down. You’re a strong girl. Always have been, always will be.”

  I was reminded of a story that my mother likes to tell to show the world how “strong” I am. When I was four, I mentioned that there was a sore on my little arm. Mama was late for work; Daddy was out of town. She promised to look at it later and dropped me off at kindergarten. The “sore” was some sort of oozing, ulcerous wound that had to be lanced, drained, and stitched. The upshot of this story is that I didn’t cry. Not even while the doctor sewed the wound together with hard tugs. Of all my childhood stories, this is one of my least favorites; it seems to me that someone should have noticed my condition earlier. Do you have to cry for your own mother to notic
e that your arm is festering?

  And then there’s another story that nobody likes to tell but that everybody remembers: I was only ten when Daddy died, but I didn’t cry then either. I wore my nappy gray coat in the overwarm sanctuary to hide how my lace dress strained across my chest. Beside me, my mother and Hermione both cried quiet, ladylike tears. From the corners of my eyes, I watched each of them dab her eyes with the hand that was not holding the other’s. I faced forward with my eyes on the box, so gray it was nearly silver, and tore at my cuticles with my nails. When that didn’t hurt enough, I used my teeth. Blood scribbled down the first joints of my fingers and settled in the creases of my knuckles, where it dried. When I flexed my fingers, it flaked like old paint.

  “I miss Daddy,” I said into the telephone.

  “Don’t tell me about missing Lincoln. I know all about missing Lincoln.”

  When I first got my period, I didn’t tell Mama for four months. Daddy hadn’t been dead a month. I had known it was too soon for me to hit puberty and she would cry, so I used my sister’s supplies for the first two times. Then I got caught trying to figure out how to use a tampon and Mama shook me hard by the shoulders and said that keeping secrets was the same as lying.

  With a queasy sense of déjà vu I said, “I went to the doctor the other day. I’m sick.”

  “Oh my God,” she said. “Is it HIV?”

  The phone was slick in my wet, hot hands. I wiped them on the carpet and said, “They don’t know how it happened. Maybe I was exposed to radiation, or maybe it’s just because I got my period so early in the first place. It’s not lupus, they checked for that.”

  “Cancer?”

  “Mama, I’m menopaused. Already.”

  “You’re twenty-five,” she said.

  “I know.”

  She was silent, even after I called her name three times. On the fourth time, I spoke loud enough to bring Rochelle trotting in from the kitchen. When my mother answered with a quiet “yes,” I shooed Rochelle away.